Improper Gentlemen

by Diane Whiteside

What if the part that wasn’t true in her real life was the bit about being able to trust Aidan Danaher?

  Chapter 6

  The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars,

  But in ourselves if we are underlings.

  —SHAKESPEARE, Julius Caesar

  The white soup would’ve done credit to a duke’s table. The duck and braised lamb were a triumph. Now the liveried servants were bringing out a treacle folly festooned with berries, a dish worthy of some Eastern potentate’s decadent salon. The first bite melted on George Stonemere’s tongue, but once it slid down his gullet, it galled his belly.

  By rights, this ought to have been his feast. He shot a quick glare toward his cousin Aidan at the head of the long table. There he was, the Irish upstart, laughing and conversing with the viscountess and her lovely daughter, as if he’d been to the manor born.

  George sighed.

  “Is the treacle not to your liking?” Rosalinde Burke murmured at his side. “I confess I find it delicious.”

  “Oh, the food’s fine,” George said, quickly mastering his expression. It wouldn’t do to show his resentment openly. “And I must commend my cousin on the seating arrangement of his guests. I’m delighted by your company.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she said, but her gaze darted toward the head of the table as well. “The baron does seem to know how to entertain in high style.”

  “Indeed.” George swirled the excellent claret in the goldrimmed goblet and downed the last of it in one long gulp. “But then Stonehaven is designed with this sort of gathering in mind. And loftier ones, as well. It has sheltered both statesmen and kings.”

  “You have been here often?

  “I grew up here.” In fact, before it was learned that Aidan had not died in prison as everyone believed, George was about to be named conservator of the estate. No one could expect that half-wit Liam to function as the baron, even if he’d inherit the title.

  And after a decent amount of time, who knew? Accidents happened all the time, especially to one as easily distracted as Liam. The title might very well have swung back to George’s side of the family.

  But Aidan’s return changed all that.

  “In fact,” George said, grimacing at the irony, “I was born in the very chamber my cousin is so graciously allowing me to use for this fortnight.”

  “Then you knew Ai—his lordship—as a boy?”

  “I knew him as a young hellion,” George said. No point in mincing words if he wanted to turn opinion against the man. “He came here when he was about fifteen. In truth, I held out no hope of his ever managing in Polite Society after the upbringing he’d had. As the twig is bent and all that.”

  George sneaked another glance at his cousin. Judging from the crimson flush on Lady Sophia’s face, Aidan was doing quite well with Polite Society. The chit couldn’t take her eyes off him.

  “So that’s his game,” he murmured.

  “I beg your pardon?” Miss Burke said.

  “I was just thinking what a charming couple my cousin and Lady Sophia make,” George said between clenched teeth. “He could do far worse than to ally himself with Viscount Musgrave’s sister. A smart match, that.”

  Rosalinde Burke’s lips went white as chalk.

  So the wind blows in that quarter as well. George had never seen why his cousin should so ensnare the imagination of every female who crossed his path, but Aidan invariably did.

  “You know, it occurs to me, Miss Burke,” George said. “Your father was the commissioner in Bermuda. If you were there as well, and I believe I heard somewhere that you were, you and my cousin might have met during his unfortunate incarceration.”

  She gave him a thin-lipped smile. “The island is not as small as you might imagine, sir. However, since his lordship was the elected representative of the Irish prisoners there, I believe he may have come to the house to meet with my father from time to time.”

  She flicked her gaze toward Aidan and George read a fleeting glint of despair. Then a wall seemed to rise up behind her lovely eyes when she looked back at George.

  “However, since your cousin was pardoned, I wonder that you mention his unsavory past with such regularity,” she said with primness. “Especially when the Crown considers itself satisfied with his innocence.”

  George stifled a snort when she defended Aidan. So the lucky bastard had gotten to her. Well, when the barn door has been left open once, the mare is more likely to go wandering again. Only this time, with any luck, he’d be the one to ride her instead of his damned cousin.

  “A pardon doesn’t signify innocence, you know,” George said. Why did no one ever seem to remember that Aidan had confessed to the crime? “But I fear I’ve offended you without intending to. Let us not quarrel, since I predict we’ll be great friends by the end of this gathering. I believe everyone is dropping formalities for now. In fact, I’m certain I heard Lady Sophia call my cousin by his Christian name before the fish course arrived. Won’t you please call me George?”

  Rosalinde choked on her bite of treacle and covered her mouth with her hand for a moment.

  “Are you quite well?” he asked with solicitude. That settled it. If she was chafing for want of Aidan, she’d be ripe for his taking.

  She dabbed her lips with her linen napkin and took a sip of claret. “I’m fine . . . George.”

  “I’m vastly relieved.”

  He also figured he was halfway up her skirt. A woman scorned was always ready to exact her revenge on the one who’d spurned her by swiving a willing substitute silly. George would be delighted to aid her in that cause.

  “You know, whenever there are house parties, inevitably the guests are all called upon to entertain in some fashion.” And a handful of entertainment she’d make too, but for now George would concentrate on the public frivolities. Then, with any luck, the private ones would take their course. “I’ve been told I have a remarkably true tenor, so I’d be happy to take a song request from you later, if you like. What special talent will you regale us with, dear Rosalinde?”

  He could think of several skills he’d enjoy teaching her later. She had a delicate pointed tongue and such lovely pouting lips. His cock stiffened at the thought of those lips wrapped around it. Some women could relax their throat muscles with a bit of practice. He wondered how much of him she could take in.

  A few tendrils had escaped Rosalinde’s chignon. George imagined fisting her heavy hair, forcing her to her knees and pulling her head back.

  A few well-placed smacks and a woman can always do more than she thinks.

  George pulled his napkin from his neck and draped it over his lap lest she see how she was affecting him. No need to spook her.

  “I don’t play the pianoforte and I fear my singing voice will never be compared to a flute,” she said as her fork chased her dessert around her plate. She seemed to have lost interest in the treacle, for she never raised it to her mouth. “But I have been told my recitations of Shakespeare are very fine.”

  “Ah! Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” he said.

  When her eyes lit up, he saw his way in. The girl only wanted a bit of wooing. Time to bone up on the Bard and he’d be in Rosalinde Burke’s bed quicker than Romeo shagged Juliet.

  But when she looked back at his cousin with a wistful smile tugging her lips, he realized he might need more help than Shakespeare could give him. Of course, some of Shakespeare’s heroes put paid to their rivals in short order. MacBeth. Cassius. They certainly knew how to screw their courage to the sticking point.

  Or maybe he should take a page from Iago, and drive his cousin wild with envy and mistrust. It could work, provided Aidan cared a fig for Miss Burke.

  George smiled and signaled for the wine steward to refill his goblet. This party was shaping up to be a good idea after all.

  The parlor game was still in full swing, but Rosalinde was so sick of “The Minister’s Cat” she feared she might cough up a hairball. Or maybe it wasn’t the game itse
lf. Maybe it was the fawning way Lady Sophia directed all her clever little repartees to Aidan. Rose was so distracted by him whenever it was her turn to add something original to the nonsense that she could only stammer the most banal offerings.

  She excused herself and pushed through the tall doors of the solarium and out onto a long Italianate veranda overlooking the garden. When a breeze rose, the sweet scent of heliotrope rushed past her nostrils. The moon had newly risen, three-quarters full so the garden spread out in shadows below her. It was no fussy French confection. This was an English riot with blooms spilling everywhere, only trimmed enough to bare a silver-pebbled path among the dense growth.

  She glanced back toward the manor, but no one had followed her. Disappointment fizzled in her chest. Surely Aidan could have managed a moment away from his other guests.

  If he cared enough to notice she was even gone.

  Beyond the garden, the maze squatted malignantly in the deeper darkness, its hedges sheared down to man-height instead of being left to grow entirely wild. In the center, a low mound rose.

  The grotto.

  Rosalinde leaned on the granite balustrade and squinted at it. A light emanated from the center of the maze, as if someone had left a lantern burning inside the hollowed earth.

  “Well, it appears you’ve located the infamous grotto,” a masculine voice sounded behind her.

  She turned to find Edwin walking toward her. Tall and powerful in his green jacket and buff trousers, he moved with masculine grace. When the man approached, he was a sight to set feminine hearts aflutter.

  Why does he not ruffle mine in the slightest?

  By rights, he should. The viscount was her great-aunt’s choice for her. Even her maid urged her to encourage him, for pity’s sake. She tried to summon a flicker of attraction, a swirl of some sensation worthy of the charm Edwin exuded, but she could feel nothing but polite interest in the man. At least his topic of conversation was one she could warm to.

  “You speak as if you know something of the grotto’s history,” she said.

  He came and leaned his forearms on the balustrade beside her. The masculine scent of citrusy bergamot and spicy sandalwood swirled around him. “I should. I was here that summer.”

  “Oh.” She didn’t need to ask which summer. The murder of the upstairs maid was evidently uppermost in everyone’s mind. “So you knew the baron before.”

  “Yes, but he wasn’t the baron then. I don’t think Aidan even knew he was likely to be,” Edwin said. “He and Liam had been here three or four years. While it was obvious Liam would never make a scholar, Aidan showed surprising quickness. He and I were supposed to go to Oxford together that fall, so our families thought it might be good for us to become acquainted ahead of time.”

  “His cousin George was here that summer too, I believe.”

  Edwin turned to look at her, his face half-shadowed, half-silvered by moonlight. “Now there’s the one who had expectations. George always thought this would be his. He had no idea there was anyone in his path until Aidan and his brother were sent back here.”

  “So George had an interest in seeing Aidan removed,” she reasoned. Rosalinde hated the thought that she’d just had supper next to a man who could murder a poor serving girl, but the alternative was that Aidan might have done it. “You don’t suppose George—”

  “Aidan confessed,” Edwin reminded her. “Someone else was suspected at the time, but when Aidan came forward, that was that.”

  “Who else was suspected?”

  He brought his fingertips to his brow and shook his head. “It escapes me now. That summer was such a muddle for us all. Most of all for George, who thought he’d be the beneficiary of the whole sordid scandal.”

  Edwin straightened and stared at the grotto. “No one reckoned on a pardon since Aidan didn’t press the issue of his inheritance at the trial. At the time, he only seemed interested in seeing the matter closed as quickly as possible. But it appears his mother had a few friends at court who were willing to work on her behalf, even after she made such a disastrous choice.”

  “By that, you mean abandoning an estate to marry a man she obviously loved.”

  “Is there any other way to see it? If she’d wed an Englishman, her sons would have grown up here instead of in Ireland.”

  “You have something against the Irish?”

  “No, not at all. But you must admit, they aren’t like us, are they?”

  Insular, pretentious prigs, you mean? almost escaped from her lips, but she bit back the retort. She’d learn more from Edwin if she kept him talking than if she insulted him. Her chest ached at the thought of Aidan being responsible for Peg Bass’s death. There had to be another explanation.

  “I think I know what you mean,” she said. “There’s something a bit wild about the Celts. Fey, I think Aidan would call it.”

  A touch of magic. A force of nature. Sometimes if she half-closed her eyes, she thought she saw it draped over him like a gossamer mantle.

  That otherworldly quality was one of the things that drew her to him. That and his natural good-humor.

  Aidan was a convicted felon, but he laughed more than any man of her acquaintance. He’d worked with his hands without complaint, when all the time he was really a gentleman. When he was pardoned, she imagined he thought it a grand joke.

  Back in Bermuda, when she watched him curry the horses with his big strong hands, all she could do was imagine what those work-rough palms would feel like smoothed over her skin.

  “I consider myself his friend, you understand, but ‘wild’ is precisely the word I’d use for Aidan,” Edwin said as he covered one of her hands with his.

  It happened so unexpectedly, she didn’t have time to evade his capture of her hand. His palm was cool and dry. Her great-aunt would be enraptured by this new development, but all it did for Rosalinde was make her fingers feel curiously clammy.

  “I wish we all hadn’t fallen into that game of poque with Aidan at Lady Chudderley’s,” he said. “Then none of us would have to be here.”

  “From someone who claims to be his friend, that doesn’t sound terribly friendly.”

  “Perhaps because more than friendship sways me now. I hope you’ll be cautious around him, Rosalinde,” Edwin said. “I’d hate for you to be hurt.”

  “Why would Aidan hurt me?”

  “Oh, he wouldn’t do it intentionally,” Edwin said. “He’s not the sort you’d think would harm a woman. In fact, I’m fully prepared to believe the whole sordid business with that maid was somehow accidental. But I also believe Aidan is dangerous. More so now than ever.”

  “Why?”

  “Because when a man has killed and gotten away with it, he has no boundaries. No ‘thus far and no farther,’ if you will,” Edwin said in a stolid upright tone that would have done credit to a Methodist preacher. “A man without limits is always dangerous.”

  A shiver raked her spine.

  Edwin brought her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss on it. Her great-aunt would be in a near paroxysm of joy, but Rosalinde couldn’t raise so much as a flutter in her chest.

  “I’d protect you from him,” Edwin said. “If you give me leave to do so.”

  “And who will protect her from you?” came a voice from the shadows.

  It sounded like Aidan, so Rosalinde turned, but his brother stepped into the full moonlight instead.

  “Liam, what are you about, skulking there in the dark?” Edwin asked.

  “I never skulk. Skulk means to hide and I wasn’t hiding. I’m just easy to overlook. You always said so, Edwin.”

  The viscount made a low noise of irritation in the back of his throat. “What are you doing out here then?”

  “I was lighting the lamp in the grotto,” Liam said. “I always light the lamp for Peg Bass. Someone has to. How else will she see to get home?”

  “Why haven’t you joined the party?” Edwin demanded.

  “I don’t like parlor games. I like orchids. I
’ll go to the conservatory.” Liam started toward the house. “You should go in too. Before she comes.”

  “Before who comes, Liam?” Rosalinde asked.

  He turned and slanted her a quick look that seemed to suggest she was the daft one. “Peg Bass, o’ course. I’d go in now if I was you.” He walked on for a bit, then turned back, glancing in Rosalinde’s direction, but not meeting her gaze. “Sometimes when Peg comes, she’s angry. You wouldn’t like her then.”

  Chapter 7

  I am afeared,

  Being in night, this is all but a dream,

  Too flattering sweet to be substantial.

  —SHAESPEARE, Romeo and Juliet

  The last door had been latched a good quarter of an hour earlier. Aidan waited until the house was so quiet he could hear the creak of the oak tree outside his window before he lifted the candle from the sconce that opened the secret panel in one wall of his suite. A narrow passageway yawned before him, but he didn’t hesitate. Rosalinde’s chamber waited at the end of the hidden corridor.

  He wished he’d been able to warn her of his coming. There was always the chance that she’d be startled and scream when the wall opened to admit him to her room. Unfortunately, there hadn’t been any opportunity for private speech with her all evening.

  As host, he’d had to circulate among all his guests. Each time he’d tried to snatch a moment with her, Viscount Musgrave or his cousin George hovered nearby.

  He thought the evening would never end.

  The passageway stopped and he peered through the thin slit in the wall. Her room was dark, so he saw nothing. A breath of air soughed through the crack and his candle flame wavered.

  She must be abed. If she’d been awake, he’d have tried speaking to her through the thin false wall to warn her of his presence, but now he’d simply have to chance it.

  He pressed the release and a wall panel rolled back on hidden hinges, far enough for him to ease into the room. Fortunately, the mechanical system was in excellent repair and the operation silent as an owl’s flight. Aidan pinched off the candle flame and peered around.