Captivated by a Lady's Charm

by Christi Caldwell

  “You may be rest assured, I’d not sully your sister with my attentions.” They were perhaps the truest words he’d spoken to the other man since the earl had stormed in making demands of him.

  The Earl of Sinclair searched his face. Then, he gave a slow, pleased nod. He took another long sip of his brandy and then set his glass down. “As long as we are clear, St. Cyr.” He shoved back his chair.

  Christian’s patience snapped. “I will have you know your warnings are not what are keeping me away from the lady.” His sense of his self-worth and her goodness are what did.

  The earl stood. He made to go, but then stopped.

  Christian stared questioningly up at him. What in blazes did the man want now?

  “I understand I am indebted to you for coming to the aid of my youngest sister, Poppy, in Hyde Park.” That gruff expression of gratitude seemed forcibly pulled from the other man.

  The last thing he cared to have from Prudence’s brother was his thanks. Christian swiped the bottle and poured himself another glass. “I do not need your thanks, nor do I care to have you in my debt. I have already assured you, I do not intend to hunt your sister’s fortune.” He leaned back and cradled his snifter in one hand. “Therefore, this meeting, I expect, is concluded?”

  The earl tightened his mouth, and then with a terse nod, turned on his heel and strode back to his table, where the Marquess of Drake now sat taking in the exchange. Lord Drake had fashioned himself a kind of friend to Christian over the years. Just another undeserved friendship. As though he’d detected Christian’s gaze, the marquess looked past Sin’s approaching form. The revered and deservedly lauded war-hero tipped his head in acknowledgement.

  Shame twisted and turned in Christian’s belly as he forced his head to return that silent greeting. Then, thankfully Prudence’s brother claimed the seat in front of the marquess, effectively blocking him from the other man’s line of vision. He released a slow breath. But for the vile task of hunting some lady’s fortune expected of him to save his mother, Christian was not unlike the Earl of Sinclair. Both of them were two men who’d fight and claw to protect their sisters at any costs.

  That marquess across from the earl, however, was an altogether different matter. With his heroic exploits during the Peninsular campaigns, he epitomized everything Christian had never been on the field of battle. Yet, those bloody battles were not isolating moments. For amidst the volley of gunfire and cannon smoke and the agonized screams of men dying, a person learned his true worth.

  Christian attended the amber contents of his drink—the color of mud and blood. He pressed his eyes closed a moment. The Earl of Sinclair wanted him far away from Prudence for he saw in Christian nothing more than a fortune hunter. But the truth was far worse. For in the heart of war, Christian had proven himself to be a worthless coward who’d lived when other more deserving men had died. And just then he hated that he’d ever collided with the bright-eyed Lady Prudence Tidemore who reminded him of his failings and left him wishing he was, in fact—more.

  Forcing his eyes open, he took another long sip of his drink. He’d promised the earl he would stay away from the lady. What the earl did not realize was that he had no choice but to stay away from Prudence. With each meeting, she slipped deeper and deeper into his mind and if he did not steer clear of all hints and signs of her, he would be forever lost.

  Chapter 15

  Lesson Fifteen

  A lady should not brood when a gentleman suddenly ceases to come around…

  It was snowing. Those white flakes that often portended hope and goodness for her, now mocked her with the elusiveness of that emotion known as love. From where she sat, on the window seat of the Ivory Parlor, Prudence skimmed her gaze over the quiet streets below. She’d not seen him again.

  She captured her lower lip between her teeth and tried not to think about the fact she’d not seen hint of the Marquess of St. Cyr in five days. But not thinking of him was as impossible as convincing her propriety-driven mama that she had nothing to worry about in terms of properness where her three unwed daughters were concerned. For five days, Prudence had dragged Poppy to the spot in Hyde Park where she’d met Christian twice. The cold, barren winter had heightened his absence. And night after night she’d suffered through balls and soirees and formal dinner parties, with not even a glimpse or whisper of him.

  It was as though she’d merely imagined him and the brief time they’d shared together. Except… She touched her gloved fingertips to her mouth. She’d not imagined his kiss. Her lips still burned with the memory of his lips on hers. That kiss had clearly meant a good deal less to him. A viselike pressure squeezed around her heart. She took a slow breath to ease the hurt pressing down, and yet, it would not go away. For she missed him. Missed his teasing grin and the ease in talking to him and waltzing with him, even if it had only been two sets he’d expertly guided her through.

  It was her blasted questions. By the tension in his tightly held frame, he’d no more wanted inquiries into his past than she wanted to have another London Season. And yet, she’d persisted and challenged his need for silence. Challenged, when it hadn’t been her right to do so. Who was she to put questions to him?

  Only, even now she would have asked those questions anyway. Because ultimately she wanted to know who Christian was beneath the veneer of carefree rogue—a veneer she now knew from everything he’d revealed was false.

  “Why are you touching your lips?”

  With alacrity she dropped her hand to her side and spun her head to face a stern-frowning Penelope who stood framed in the entrance. “Penelope,” she greeted, infusing as much cheer as she could into that greeting.

  “And why are you frowning?” her sister pressed.

  Poppy took her elder sister by the shoulders and gave her a slight shake. “Perhaps she is frowning because you are peppering her with questions.” She skipped past her and over to the tray of refreshments set out by the maid a short while ago. “Isn’t that right, Pru?” She plopped herself inelegantly onto the white ivory sofa and snatched a raspberry tart from the silver tray. From where she sat, she gave a discreet wink at Prudence.

  Alas, not discreet enough. Penelope propped her hands on her hips and stormed into the room as though she were Wellington leading one of his infamous charges. Her younger sister somehow managed to look magnificent in her white skirts when Prudence had the look of Cook’s cakes with too much frosting. “And why are you winking at her?”

  Abandoning all hope of the blessed silence of her own miserable company, Prudence swung her legs over the side of the sofa. “I don’t know what you are talking about.” And because she knew it would infuriate her younger by two years sister, she winked.

  Poppy dissolved into a fit of hilarity which only deepened their sister’s frown. “It is about that gentleman, isn’t it?”

  Which promptly killed all levity. Poppy’s eyebrows shot to her hairline and she gave an “I’m-sorry-I-have-no-idea-how-to-distract-her-now” look in her direction.

  Prudence’s heart stuttered. “What gentleman?” she asked belatedly.

  “Come,” Penelope scoffed. “Do you think I do not know of Lord St. Cyr?”

  She wetted her lips. Actually, she had thought Penelope remained wholly ignorant about the man who’d thrown her world off-kilter. “And what is it you think you know?” she asked tentatively. For Penelope’s disapproval stemmed from somewhere, and she suspected that somewhere was over six feet tall, and lamenting the woes of having four troublesome sisters.

  Penelope gave a toss of her curls. “Beyond your chance meeting in Hyde Park when he happened to rescue Poppy.” Their sister clearly took umbrage with the idea that she had loaned her very life in one of Prudence’s schemes.

  She frowned, somehow managing the stern disapproval their mother would have approved of. “He didn’t happen to rescue me. He did rescue me.” The youngest Tidemore ruined all effect at mature sophistication by popping too much of a sugared pastry in her mou
th.

  “Did he?” Penelope shot back never taking her gaze from Prudence’s. “And how very coincidental it was that, of all the places you should find yourself in Hyde Park, was near His Lordship?”

  Having had enough of her sister’s unnecessary needling, she came to her feet in a flurry of skirts. “You and Jonathan should both find yourselves grateful he was there.”

  Poppy gave a firm nod of her head, her mouth too full of her tart to offer any suitable reply beyond that.

  “For if he hadn’t—”

  “If he hadn’t, then he would not have nearly trampled Poppy under the legs of his mount.”

  She wrinkled her nose. Well, she had her there. But still…

  “Well, I didn’t have any place on the riding path,” Poppy put in. Unhelpfully.

  “Precisely!” Penelope exclaimed, jabbing her finger in the air.

  “Neither of you had a place on the riding path. And yet there you were.” Oh, blast, with her inquisitiveness and blasted intelligence, Penelope would have made a better Bow Street Runner than John Fielding. “No doubt to meet Lord St. Cyr.”

  Poppy mouthed a silent “I’m sorry” over in Prudence’s direction. She gave her a forgiving smile. When Penelope was in one of her moods, she could rival their mother with her disapproval.

  “It matters not,” she said tiredly. “The gentleman has little interest in me.”

  “Good,” Penelope said with such emotion that a blend of anger and hurt flooded Prudence.

  “What do you know of him?” she snapped, stalking over to the King Louis XIV chair her sister occupied. “You know nothing beyond the gossip columns.”

  “I know what Sin has said of him,” Penelope all but shouted coming to her feet and coming toe-to-toe with her.

  Fury spread through Prudence’s being, threatening to consume her. “What disparaging words did he utter about the marquess?”

  “So, it is true.”

  “Enough!” Poppy wedged herself between them and with several deliberate shoves, separated them. “You are not to fight over a gentleman.”

  “We are not fighting over a gentleman,” Prudence bit out. “We are fighting about one.” How dare her sister form an opinion based on nothing more than sugar and water about a man she knew nothing of. Had she not herself been victim to Society’s ill opinion that she’d even now pass judgment upon him?

  Their chests heaved with the force of their ire. It was Penelope who stepped away. The fight seemed to leave her willowy frame, replaced with the same abject disappointment she’d worn the day Prudence clipped the ringlets off her favorite doll when they’d been girls of seven and five. “You said you would not make a scandal the way Patrina had.” Had her sister’s words dripped with condescending ire, it would have been easier to take than this abject disappointment.

  Prudence’s throat worked. “I am not making a scandal of myself.” The urge to fold her hands behind her back and cross her fingers was as strong now as it had been when she’d clipped that doll’s curls.

  “Aren’t you?” Penelope shot back. She cast a searching look at Poppy, who, unable to hold her sister’s accusatory gaze, glanced at her slippers. “Mama asked that there be no scandals. No elopements or rushed marriages.” Of which there would never be with Christian. “And no—”

  “I am well aware of what Mother’s mantra is.”

  “And it is important to each of us,” Penelope said with an entreaty in her tone that tugged at Prudence’s sense of responsibility as her elder sister. “None of us will marry. And most especially not if you are throwing yourself before a scandalous rogue.”

  Some of her guilt melted away when presented with her sister’s judgmental words. “I am not throwing myself before him.” Her cheeks burned with the heat of her lie. Either way, it mattered not. With Christian’s sudden, inexplicable disappearance, she was presenting herself not at all.

  Penelope stepped around Poppy, and their younger sister moved quickly as though fearing a fight was imminent, but Penelope merely captured Prudence’s hands. “I am worried about you, Pru,” she whispered. Grief ravaged her face. “I will not see you become Patrina.”

  “I will not be Patrina,” she promised, giving her sister’s hands a slight squeeze. It was on the tip of her tongue to point out that for the scandalous act carried out in her sister’s ill-thought out elopement, Patrina was now blissfully in love and happy and even now awaiting the birth of her second child in the countryside, but something called the words back. As put out as she might be with her sister’s unfair judgment of Christian and her highhanded reprimands, Penelope had fashioned herself as the reserved protector of their unwed trio. And she could never, would never, allow hurt resentment to come between the love she had for Penny.

  Prudence gave her sister’s hands another squeeze. “Someday you will see the ultimate joy known by Patrina and not just the grimness of our family’s circumstances.”

  Penelope arched an eyebrow. “And is your time in London a joyous one?”

  A shocked gasp escaped Poppy. “Penelope,” she chided.

  The middle Tidemore sister had the good grace to blush. “I am merely saying that I understand why Sin would speak to Lord St. Cyr,” she muttered under her breath.

  Silence met her pronouncement, punctuated by the crackling hiss of the raging fire in the hearth and the occasional passing carriage rolling along the cobblestones in the London streets outside their home. Prudence remained frozen, all the air and energy sucked out of her as she stared unblinking at her sister. “What did you say?” Surely she’d heard her sister wrong. Surely Sin, even in a misguided sense of brotherly devotion and protectiveness, would never do something as vile as take it upon himself to seek out the gentleman who’d captured her heart.

  Penelope widened her gaze and then looked between her sisters. She slapped a hand to her mouth and shook her head with a dizzying quickness.

  Prudence took her by the shoulders, her heart pounding loudly in her ears. “What did he say?” Her words emerged on a breathless whisper.

  Her sister shrugged free of her grasp and stepped around Prudence. “I do not know precisely what was said,” Penelope sidestepped, backing away, and putting the sofa between them.

  Tracking her movement with her gaze, Prudence matched her steps. “Penelope?” she demanded.

  “He is a fortune hunter,” Penelope said, coming to a halt beside the rose-inlaid, mahogany, side table. She smoothed her palms over the front of her skirts.

  “Is he?” Shocked disappointment filled Poppy’s tone and she froze with her fingertips poised over the tray of refreshments.

  “He is not hunting my fortune,” Prudence bit out.

  “Is he not?” Oh, how she hated her sister’s glib, knowing tone.

  “No, he is not,” she snapped. No, her sister thought she knew, but she’d only gleaned pieces of the truth. For if Christian had truly intended to trap her fortune, he could have ruined her easily upon his balcony or in Hyde Park, on both of the occasions they’d met.

  The irony of being wholly unable to bring up to scratch a gentleman purported to be in the market for a wealthy bride didn’t escape her. Which only roused thoughts of Christian with some demure, smiling, proper, and scandal-free miss as his young bride. Pain scissored through her and she folded her arms close and squeezed.

  Poppy remained with her fingers poised over the tray, seeming to consider both of her sisters and Penelope clearly sensed a wavering in Lord St. Cyr’s support from the youngest Tidemore, for she directed her next words to Poppy. “Perhaps he is not hunting Prudence’s fortune, but he is in dire need of money. He inherited a bankrupt marquisate—”

  “How do you know this?” Prudence gritted between her teeth. Those details belonged to no one but him and he’d shared them with her in the strictest of confidence.

  “Everyone knows,” Penelope said with such an infuriating shrug that all the earlier warmth she felt for her blasted, obstinate sister fled. “You should thank Sin
for warning one such as him away from you.” She wrinkled her nose. “After all, that is what he should have done with Marshville,” she said, speaking of the man who’d ruined Patrina and, subsequently, all of them.

  She closed the space between them in three long strides. “How dare you compare him to Marshville. He is a good man.” She thought of Christian, a young man of seventeen, off to fight Boney’s forces. “He is honorable. Courageous. Brave. And I will not stand by and listen to you disparage him.”

  A stilted silence met her passionate defense. And standing there, chest heaving with barely suppressed emotion, she registered the horrified shock in her sisters’ like expressions. Oh, God. She’d said too much. But even so, she’d not take back a word she’d uttered in his defense. “He is a good man,” she repeated. “And I don’t care to hear another foul word that either you or Sin have to say. If you’ll excuse me?” Without awaiting a response, she spun on her heel and marched past them. Her heart thumped a rapid beat in time to her footsteps as she strode from the room and through the corridors.

  With her sisters left in the Ivory Parlor, she increased her stride until she was all but sprinting down the halls, past curious servants. Climbing the stairs, she made her way to her chambers never more grateful for the privacy of that room. Prudence pressed the door handle and stepped inside. Knowing her sisters as she did, she closed the wood panel and turned the lock.

  As her breath came fast from the force of her emotions and the brisk pace she’d set for herself, Prudence leaned against the door and borrowed support from the hard surface. Her brother had spoken to Christian. At long last, agonizing over his absence these five days, it all made sense. The dunderhead had listened to her brother’s warnings and steered clear of her. At least, that was the truth she told herself and the belief she held on to. For how else was there to explain the connection they’d shared, solidified by his kiss and whispered words, suddenly severed?