An Extraordinary Flirtation

by Maggie MacKeever

  Do unto others... Nick pondered his own recent use of blackmail. “I hardly ruined her. She threw herself on me—

  “I didn’t!” protested Zoe , from her position on the floor.

  Beau ignored her. So did Nick. “And I had no choice but to defend myself. You know, at some point in time, you should probably have turned her over your knee. Or locked her in her room.” Or even better, pitched her off the roof.

  Beau looked at his daughter, who was regaining her normal color, now that she had decided to again breathe. It might well be true that she had initiated matters, but the marquess would marry her nonetheless, because someone clearly had to marry her, and soon. Perhaps Mannering would be able to keep her in line. Although the episode on the stairway suggested otherwise. But then there was the title. And the extensive Mannering fortune. Beau could do far worse for his only chick.

  Nick disliked that contemplative expression. “No one saw but you,” he pointed out. “Your daughter misunderstood my purpose in coming here. I wished to talk to you about something else altogether. Perhaps we might just forget that this unfortunate incident ever took place.”

  Unfortunate incident? Too long ignored, Zoe got up from the floor. Lord Mannering didn’t sound a bit like a man whose heart was engaged, which put her on her mettle, because if she was going to break his heart— which he richly deserved, pretending to not want to kiss her—then she must engage it first. When she did get around to breaking his heart, ‘twould be all the more satisfying if the whole world knew she had brought London’s most determined bachelor to heel before she had crushed him flat beneath her boot. And in the meantime she would be a marchioness.

  Beau hadn’t stopped talking. “Do you deny trying to entice my daughter into a squalid little intrigue?”

  Not Beau’s daughter, but his sister. And there had been nothing squalid about it. Nick touched the painful lump that was forming on the back of his head. “I do.”

  Beau knew more than a little about intrigues himself. He was beginning to suspect that his daughter also knew more about them than she should. “Nonetheless, you’ll marry her, my lord.”

  Zoe tripped gracefully across the floor to slip her aim through Nick’s. He attempted to remove it. She dug in her fingernails and smiled beatifically. “I shall become your marchioness with pleasure, Lord Mannering,” she said, just as Widdle returned to the hallway with the other members of the family, and Lord Mannering’s visiting card.

  Both ladies gazed upon the scene with astonishment. “I see Zoe has been in her tantrums again.” Ianthe sighed, as she knelt down to pick up the pieces of her prized vase. Daisy ran to her mistress, who stood still as a stone.

  “I’ll get you another!” said Beau, before Ianthe could start moaning over the damned vase. “More importantly, Mannering has come to make Zoe a declaration. She has accepted. With my blessing, of course.”

  Ianthe sank back on her heels and looked astonished. “In the front hallway?”

  “He could wait no longer,” Zoe said smugly, already half believing the fiction herself. “Passion overwhelmed us both, and he swept me right off my feet.”

  Lord Mannering might still have protested, had indeed parted his lips to speak; but then he saw the contemptuous expression on Lady Norwood’s lovely face, and his jaw snapped shut.

  Chapter 14

  Baron Fitzrichard was not unfamiliar with the great old mansion so appreciated by members of the Mannering family who wished to seclude themselves from the world. However, he had never before visited the master bedchamber, where massive beams supported the ceiling, and tapestries featuring a procession of lions and dragons and unicorns marched across the walls, and bright rugs gleamed on the polished wooden floor. Chests and chairs were scattered about the room, along with various oddities, including ancient books, and a foot rule, and a gaily colored feathered fan. In one corner stood an ancient and somewhat battered suit of armor known fondly to the family as Ferdinand.

  Scarlet velvet draperies adorned the square-paned windows and the enormous canopied four-poster bed. “You can’t say I didn’t warn you, Nicky!” Fitz said, as he regarded its occupant. “And you should have listened to me, because it’s plain as the nose on your face that I knew what I was talking about.”

  The nose on Lord Mannering’s face was not plain at that moment, but buried in a pillow, for he was sprawled on his bed while Jacob rubbed a balsam containing white Spanish soap, opium, rectified spirits of wine, and camphor on his abused back. In addition to these measures, a fomentation of white poppy heads, elder flowers, and water had been applied to the lump on his head; and Mary had rushed to the apothecary for a draught composed of liquid laudanum, cinnamon water, and common syrup, which should prove marvelously efficacious if one subscribed to the dictum that the worse a medicine tasted the greater its curative powers. No matter how severe his discomfort, however, the marquess was adamant about not ingesting anything containing horses’ hooves or wood lice, and furthermore had refused to let himself be cupped.

  As result of all these measures—in particular the opium, poppy heads, and laudanum—Nick was not feeling as poorly as he had when he arrived here. “That will be sufficient abuse for the moment, Jacob,” he muttered, into the pillow. Jacob replaced the lid on the jar of balsam and withdrew.

  Fitz ventured further into the chamber and hauled a velvet-upholstered chair closer to the bed. “Insanity in the family,” he continued. “I suspected as much, and now I’m sure. You do want to be leg-shackled. You must! Although I’d think being leg-shackled to the little Loversall would be a fate worse than death.”

  Nick gritted his teeth, rolled over on his back, and groaned. As result of the ministrations of his faithful servants, the pain in his head had settled down to aching dully like an abscessed tooth, unless he tried to move. His back, however, still felt as if some great unseen beast had sunk in its fangs and refused to let go. “I don’t want to get leg-shackled,” he ground out. “And I’m not going to get leg-shackled. I just haven’t said so yet.”

  Fitz waved a lavender-scented handkerchief beneath his nose to combat the scent of camphor wafting from the bedstead. “The notice has already been sent to the Gazette! You told me so yourself.”

  Nick painfully pulled himself to a semi-sitting position. “I don’t give a damn about the Gazette.”

  Fitz studied his friend over the lace edge of his handkerchief. The marquess looked positively decadent, propped up amidst his pillows in the ancient bed, wearing nothing more than a sheet draped casually across his lower half. Fitz felt drab in comparison, for Nicky’s summons had interrupted his toilette, as result of which he was wearing the plainest of his waistcoats. Furthermore, there had been no time to tie his cravat in anything more intricate than the Mail Coach, which could be found gracing the necks of stage coachmen and guards, swells and ruffians alike; and he still had whiskers on his chin.

  Considering the urgency of that summons, Fitz had at the very least expected to find Nicky on his deathbed, and was somewhat annoyed to discover he was not. “I thought you was supposed to be a regular out and outer! Here I leave you alone for a minute and you land in the suds. Why did you go and do such a beetle-headed thing as enter that house alone? Why did you go there, by the by? And at so uncivilized an hour?”

  Nick wondered what had prompted him to desire Fitz’s companionship in this, his hour of need. “I wanted to speak with Beau.”

  Despite his fondness for colored neck-cloths and the like, the baron was no greenhead. He fluttered the handkerchief. “But not, I’ll wager, about Miss Zoe.”

  Nick developed a sudden interest in the edging on his sheets. “No.”

  Fitz’s eyes narrowed. “Or Ianthe.”

  Nick moved, and twinged, and grimaced. “No, not Ianthe.”

  “Ha!” said Fitz, though not with disapproval. “You should have taken me with you. You’ve taken me everywhere else! Gunter’s, if you will remember? Lady Miller’s? Riding in the Park? Now look what’s happe
ned when you didn’t. You’re in the devil’s own scrape.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know. Although I doubt that it would have made a difference even had you been there. The little trollop was determined to have her way with me. You’d probably have ended up in the melee alongside the dog.”

  Fitz widened his eyes at the vision thus conjured. “Trollop? Ain’t that a little strong?”

  “Is it? The chit threw herself on me, and thrust my hand into the bosom of her dress, and tried to stick her tongue down my throat.”

  “Egad! And you let her do all this?”

  “I hadn’t much choice in the matter. She and the dog were both on top of me, and my back was broke.”

  Fitz inhaled more deeply of the handkerchief, and wished he’d brought along his hartshorn, not for the marquess but for himself. “I’d be all in a twitter if I was you. In point of fact, I am all in a twitter, and it ain’t me as will be walking down the aisle, thank God. Maybe you can persuade her to cry off.”

  “Her father wouldn’t let her, even if she could be persuaded to, which is doubtful, because now she fancies herself a marchioness.” Gingerly, Nick touched his sore head. “I can’t blame him for wishing to see her safely married. Not that I mean to oblige him. If I must, I’ll cry off myself.”

  Fitz was so shocked that he dropped his handkerchief. “If you was to cry off, it would make a dreadful scandal. You wouldn’t do such a thing!”

  Nick raised his eyebrows. “The little Loversall?”

  Fitz reconsidered. “You would. I would myself, no matter how dastardly a thing it was. Not that I would have got myself in this pickle in the first place. You ain’t thought this through, Nicky. You’d survive the business, because of who you are, but would she?”

  Nick regarded his friend with disfavor. “I thought you didn’t like the chit. If you do like her, perhaps you’d care to take her off my hands.”

  Fitz shuddered at the notion. “Of course I don’t like the chit. She’s a veritable curse—just look at you! As well as a brazen baggage, but still, does she deserve to have her reputation ruined? More to the point, even if she does deserve it, can you bear to be such a blackguard?”

  Nick scowled. “I’d rather ruin her than murder her, and that’s the only other choice.”

  It occurred to the baron that he was perhaps arguing the wrong side of the case. He certainly didn’t wish to see the marquess stand trial for murder, although Nicky would probably be let off on the grounds that it had been justified. “She’s bound to tie her garter in public sooner or later, being as she’s a Loversall,” Fitz said bracingly. “So it don’t signify.”

  Nick couldn’t bring himself to comment. He leaned his throbbing head back among his pillows and pondered the predicament that he was in. Despite the aches and pains that assailed the various portions of his anatomy, his pride was perhaps damaged most of all, for he had got caught like the greenest lad. What Fitz had said was true, wish as he might to deny it: Once the notion of his impending nuptials was published—and nothing short of murder would prevent Beau from having the announcement published—there was no way Nick could honorably withdraw. The only consolation was that Zoe demanded an elaborate ceremony in St. George’s, Hanover Square, which would take some time to prepare.

  There must be some way out of this coil. If only Nick could think. His various aches and pains—combined with opium, poppy heads, and laudanum—made concentration difficult. Just hours ago he had been in the best of moods, and mere hours before that—Alas, the scent of camphor had overpowered any scent of Cara that might have lingered in his bed.

  Silence descended on the bedchamber, broken only by the cheerful crackle of the fire that burned in the pretty carved fireplace, guarded there by andirons in the form of mythological beasts. Fitz picked up a book from the bedside table—Antonio de Torquemada’s The Spanish Mandevile of Myracles: or, The garden of curious flowers : wherein are handled sundry points of humanity, philosophy, divinity, and geography, beautified with many strange and pleasant histories, first written in Spanish by Anthonio de Torquemeda, and translated out of that tongue into English, ‘imprinted by Bernard Alsop, by the assigne of Richard Hawkins, and are to be solde at his house by Saint Annes Church neere Aldersgate, 1618’—and leafed through the pages.

  The bedroom door flew open, distracting Fitz from his Miracles (most notably the woman wrecked on an African shore who had mated with an ape and produced two sons) and the marquess from his nostalgic thoughts. Nick flinched, thinking that Jacob had returned to lay hands on him once again. Instead, Lady Norwood stalked like some avenging fury into the bedchamber. Behind her, in the hallway, the little maidservant wrung her hands. “It’s that sorry I am, my lord! I told her ladyship that you wasn’t receiving visitors, but she said that wouldn’t include her, and I didn’t know but what she was right, considering— Hem! And then she pushed right past me as if I wasn’t there.”

  “It’s all right, Mary.” Nick wondered if the poor girl might like a swallow of his laudanum draught. “Her ladyship is welcome in my bedchamber at any hour of the day or night. Greetings, cara mia. Have you brought your knife?”

  What she had brought was a temper worthy of Zoe. Cara walked over to the corner basin stand, picked up an ewer and threw it on the floor, where it shattered into bits. Then she gave the coat of armor a good hard kick. “I thought I’d find you hiding here, you coward. Tell me that this is all a bag of moonshine. Tell me that you weren’t so bloody randy that you tried to ravish Zoe on the hall stairs!”

  Nick was feeling far from randy at the moment, though Cara’s eyes were sparkling, and her bosom was heaving, and her hair was a tempting tangle of red-gold ringlets sticking out every which way. Due to all his assorted aches, Nick was uncertain whether he would ever be able to engage in amorous congress again, which would be a great pity, but life would certainly be more peaceful in that case. “In point of fact, it was she who tried to ravish me,” he retorted. Cara snorted and walked toward the fireplace. Nick took a firm grip on his sheet.

  Fascinating, mused Fitz, for it was evident to the baron that Lady Norwood was no stranger to this house, which certainly gave lie to the notion that Lord Mannering conducted himself at all times like a perfect gentleman. For a lady to visit a gentleman in his quarters—let alone know her way around his bedchamber—was scandalous indeed, and if word of it got out Lady Norwood’s reputation would be ruined. Not that Nicky had conducted himself like a perfect gentleman on the stairway with Zoe, either, but that was an entirely different matter, and one that understandably had her aunt in a high dudgeon. Lady Norwood picked up a porcelain vase and flung it on the hearth. Fitz winced. “Perhaps I should leave.”

  Cara spared him only the briefest of glances before she picked up the fireplace poker and returned her attention to the figure on the bed. That familiar bed with its labyrinthine carving of animals and flowers. That even more familiar half-naked gentleman. How dare he flaunt his bare chest at her as if one glance at that glorious expanse of skin muscle would blunt the force of her outrage? “You are going nowhere, Baron Fitzrichard! I’ve nothing to say to Lord Mannering that you shouldn’t hear. Since you are his friend, you must already know that the man is a—a—”

  Nick was growing increasingly annoyed to be so continuously maligned. Cara of all people should know the nature of her niece. As well as his own nature, which didn’t include ravishing brazen misses on their papa’s hall stair steps. Although Cara had never thought highly of his nature, now that he considered it. “Satyr? Goat? Toad?” he suggested, in a snit of his own. “Lying cur, perhaps? Or maybe a dastardly rat with no more morals than to amuse myself with both niece and aunt at the same time? Oh, and we must not forget my desire for revenge!”

  The poker had a very satisfying weight. Cara brandished it and sent a book of Elizabethan riddles flying smack into the fireplace. “I was thinking more along the lines of pond scum.”

  Lord but she was beautiful, thought Nick, even if the
only fruit she put him in mind of today was a lemon, because her expression was as sour as if she’d bit into one. Then he realized that she had called him pond scum.

  So be it. He wriggled himself into a more provocative pose, and strove for a leer. “What would you have had me do, my love? The wench offered me carte blanche. I could hardly turn down so tempting an armful. Not that I’d meant to marry her, merely thought to set her up in a little house somewhere. But then your brother interfered.”

  Cara stared at the marquess in astonishment. As did Fitz. “I say, Nicky!” the baron gasped.

  “You despicable man!” cried Cara, at almost the same moment. “I’m surprised you let Beau force you into offering for Zoe.”

  Nick wished he had a snuffbox so that he might flick it open, in the one-handed fashion so favored by Fitz, to further demonstrate his insouciance. “Had I made your niece an offer, it wouldn’t have been of an honorable sort. Your brother blackmailed me into doing the right thing. I suppose I still might have refused him, vile seducer that I am. Apparently I still have a shred of conscience left, alas.”

  Cara went so rigid that she might have sat upon the poker. “You are insufferable!”

  Nick donned his most knavish look. “That’s not what you said last night. You can’t delude yourself that you didn’t know what I was like, cara. After what we once were to one another.”

  “God bless my soul!” interjected Fitz. “Nicky, don’t you think— “ He broke off, silenced by the combined weight of two glares.

  Lady Norwood turned her fury back on the marquess. “Once you had rather more finesse. Now you are a nothing but a boorish knave. A lecherous wretch. A lustful libertine who is incapable of resisting any female who flings herself at you.”

  “By George!” breathed Fitz. Lady Norwood scowled at him again, in a fashion that recalled the adage that it was wise to humor lunatics. Especially lunatics who were clutching fireplace pokers. “You’ve hit it on the nose! He’s a curst loose fish!”