“Good morning. I’ve been attempting to kidnap your sister for a picnic. I’m afraid she worries that you won’t approve.”
Evelyn choked, and hoped everyone would attribute her discomfiture to her dislike of Victor’s strictness rather than to the marquis’s choice of phrase. Saint seemed supremely confident that he now made the rules—and he had no problem with reminding her of that fact, damn him.
From his tight expression, Victor didn’t approve of Saint’s presence, or his suggestion. On the other hand, he’d been trying to make Wellington’s acquaintance since his return from India, and he had to be supremely grateful that the marquis had provided him with the introduction.
“I believe I can spare Evie for one afternoon,” her brother said slowly. “With an appropriate chaperone, of course.”
Of course. Saint couldn’t say anything to incriminate her in front of her maid. She wished she’d thought of that. Drat. She really needed to work at being more devious.
Saint also seemed to realize that his opportunity for private conversation or private anything else was vanishing. “I’ve brought my tiger.”
Victor shook his head. “I’m grateful to you for last evening, St. Aubyn, but I’m not foolish. She may go only if her maid accompanies her.”
“Very well, then.”
Well, he hadn’t quite outmaneuvered her, but he’d come close, and they were still in the drawing room of her own house with three other people present. And if she protested now, Victor would be angry, which would put her at further disadvantage, and Saint might very well carry through with his threat to dispose of the orphanage once and for all. Lucinda and Georgie obviously realized who’d won, because both of them stood.
“I should be going anyway,” Lucinda said, for appearance’s sake. “Georgie, did you still want to see the new lace at Thacker’s?”
“Yes.” The viscountess kissed Evie on the cheek. “Are you all right?” she whispered as she did so.
Evie nodded. “I just didn’t expect him to reform so quickly,” she improvised.
Lucinda squeezed her hand. “We’ll see you at Lydia Burwell’s recital tomorrow, yes?”
“Actually,” Victor cut in, escorting them to the door, “Evie has a political tea to attend tomorrow at our Aunt Houton’s.”
“We’ll see you tomorrow evening, then.”
“Oh, yes. I wouldn’t miss that.”
“Miss what?” Saint asked as Victor showed her friends from the room.
“As You Like It at Drury Lane,” she answered.
“Interesting title.” She waited for him to say something more, but he only lifted an eyebrow. “Go fetch your maid, Evelyn,” he continued after a moment. “Let’s not waste the day, shall we?”
Heat ran down her spine. He seemed to be willing to keep her secrets thus far, but she had no doubt this polite demeanor was merely a mask for some new game of his. “You may fool them,” she said quietly over her shoulder, “but you haven’t fooled me.”
“I don’t need to fool you,” he returned in the same low tone. “I own you, remember?”
Not for the first time, Evie contemplated the merits of running away from home as she climbed the stairs to get her gloves and fetch Sally. Usually she wanted to escape because of Victor and his high-handed pronouncements of how he understood politics when she never would. Today, however, any flight would actually be to protect her brother. If she vanished, though, no one would be able to stop Saint from destroying the orphanage—and what remained of her reputation.
Unless he was bluffing, of course, but it wasn’t a risk she was willing to take. Not when she still had a chance to convince him to help the children.
She and Sally made their way back downstairs to find Saint and her brother standing in the foyer, both looking as though they desperately wished to be somewhere else. If she hadn’t been so nervous, she would have been amused.
“All right, then, my lord, shall we?” she said, deciding to act as though she had already anticipated every move he might make and that nothing he did or said could possibly surprise her.
“We shall. Ruddick.”
“St. Aubyn. I expect her back by four o’clock.”
Victor was grateful for the introduction to Wellington, if he’d allotted Saint four hours with her. The marquis was gazing at her, though, so she only nodded and stepped past him to collect her bonnet and parasol.
Saint took her gloved hand, wrapping it over his arm as they descended the front steps to the short drive. “If I saw him elected to Parliament, would he grant me unsupervised overnight visitations to your bed?” he murmured.
Probably. She almost said it aloud, but thankfully her common sense took hold of her tongue before she could do so. “Sally and I won’t both fit in your phaeton,” she said instead.
“Yes, you will.”
“No, we won’t,” she returned, unable to stifle a brief smile at his scowl. “Not with your tiger there, as well. And no, Sally will not perform the services of a groom so you can leave him behind. She’s terrified of horses.” Sally was no such thing, but the maid seemed to understand the part she was playing, because she edged away from the spirited black team.
The word Saint muttered under his breath didn’t seem the least bit polite, and neither was the look he sent Sally. “Fine. We’ll walk.”
“Walk?”
“Yes, walk. Felton, take the carriage back home.”
“Yes, milord.”
Saint strode to the back of the phaeton and hauled down a large picnic basket. Thrusting his arm through the handle, he stalked back to her side. “Anything else you’d care to put in my path?”
“No, I think that’ll do for now.”
“Splendid. Come along.”
He offered his arm again, and after a hesitation she took it. With an escort present, the touch was perfectly acceptable, and the small, naughty part of her knew that she did like touching him. Very much.
“Have you really never been on a picnic before?” she asked.
“Not with a guard present, in a public setting, or with sandwiches in a basket.”
“Then what…” She trailed off. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”
“Yes, you do,” he returned, glancing over at her. “You just think you’re too proper to ask.”
“You just think you have to be improper enough to shock everyone with every sentence. Don’t you get tired of that?”
“Are we attempting to reform me again, or is this a mere chastisement of my usual poor behavior?”
Evelyn sighed. “Didn’t you learn anything?” she whispered, so that Sally, walking several feet behind them, couldn’t hear.
“I learned a great deal. I learned that you like to chain men up and kiss them when you’re the one who can dictate the action. I learned—”
“That is not so!” she snapped, her face heating.
“No? You did like making love with me, Evelyn. I know that.” He hefted the basket, obviously annoyed to be reduced to performing manual labor. “Have you touched anyone else like that?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“You, however, have obviously…touched several women before, my lord. I fail to see why you continue to torment me about my…slip of propriety.”
He chuckled, the sound low and so seductive that several women they passed on the street turned to look at him and then titter to one another. “My dear, you said you wanted to turn me into a gentleman. Don’t I have the same right to attempt to turn you into a wanton?”
“That would ruin me, Saint,” she said, trying to remember her strategy of not allowing herself to be shocked by anything he said. Honesty would work—at least it had seemed to with him before. “And I don’t wish to be ruined.”
“It would only ruin you if someone else knew about it. All we need do is be discreet. I could make sex a condition for keeping your little escapade a secret, now, couldn’t I?”
“I suppose you could. Reminding
me of some awful thing you might do, however, hardly predisposes me to want to be seduced by you.”
This time he laughed outright. It was the first time she’d ever heard him do that, and the hearty, merry sound resonated down her spine. My goodness. If he weren’t so terrible, she’d be halfway to being infatuated with him.
“What’s so amusing?” she asked, reminding herself that desirable and charming as he could be, he was still blackmailing her.
He leaned closer to whisper in her ear. “I already did seduce you, my love. And I think you like me because I’m awful.”
The gesture reminded Evie of the night all this chaos had begun, when she had found him whispering naughty things into Lady Gladstone’s ear. Only now she was the hoyden welcoming his scandalous attentions. And she did welcome them, and the heat and craving he awakened in her.
“Perhaps I do,” she admitted, noting that Lady Trent nearly ran into a lamppost, she was so busy gawking at proper Evie Ruddick walking arm in arm down the street with the Marquis of St. Aubyn. “But perhaps I’d like you even better if you were nicer.”
Saint hefted the picnic basket again as they reached the western boundary of Hyde Park. Nicer. “I’ve invited you to join me for a picnic,” he returned. “I think that’s very ‘nice’ of me.”
Evie chuckled, leaning a little against his arm as she did so. “Yes, if we overlook the fact that you threatened the orphanage if I didn’t join you.”
“Would you have come otherwise?”
Coming from him, it sounded like a childish, naive question, but he was dismayed to realize that he wanted to know the answer. And Evelyn would tell him the truth; she always did.
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I…I know you said you wouldn’t have me arrested, but I—”
“You want my word that I’ll leave the orphanage be,” he finished, somewhat distracted by the warmth of her hand over his arm. “Yes?”
Earnest as she was, she’d never join him in bed again if he didn’t give his word. And when he did, she’d expect him to keep it. Saint took a breath. He’d waited six years for an opportunity to be rid of the place. He could wait a little while longer, until he’d purged himself of the desire for her.
He nodded. “Then I give you my word. You have…four weeks to convince me to leave the Heart of Hope Orphanage standing. But I warn you, I will take a great deal of convincing.”
From her expression, now that he’d acquiesced, she didn’t know what to do next. That suited him; he’d just given himself four weeks to learn why he’d become so obsessed with her, satisfy that torment, and end their affair. If he didn’t, she would, because in four weeks the Heart of Hope Orphanage, brig and all, was becoming part of the Prince of Wales’s newest park.
“This is nice,” Evelyn said, slowing beneath a stand of old English oaks.
Saint glanced at the crowded riding path just fifty feet away, and at the equally busy footpath half that distance in the opposite direction. “Too many witnesses,” he said, urging her deeper into the park.
She pulled free of his grip. “This is a luncheon, is it not? What do you care if people see us?”
Because she was the dessert he wanted. “Here,” he said dubiously. “In the middle of everything.”
“It’s pleasant and pretty.”
“But I can’t kiss you here without ruining you. And you insist on not being ruined, as I recall.”
With an overloud laugh, Evie took his arm again. “Be quiet,” she muttered. “Talking about it is just as bad as doing it.”
“But not nearly as much fun.” Beginning to wonder whether he’d wandered into someone’s idyllic nightmare, Saint relented. “You ask a great deal, you know.”
She smiled at him. “It’s not so difficult once you get used to it. Did you bring a blanket?”
He set the heavy basket on the grass. “I don’t know. I told them to pack me a picnic.”
“Let’s see, then.”
Evelyn seemed amused, undoubtedly at his expense. Since good humor made her eyes light and set tiny dimples into her cheeks, he could tolerate it.
The basket did contain a blanket, blue and neatly folded and completely unfamiliar. Saint took it from Evelyn and snapped it open, letting it settle onto the cool grass. “Now what?”
“Put the basket in the center of the blanket, and we sit down.”
Saint directed a thumb at the maid. “And the propriety shackle? Where does she go?”
A soft blush climbed Evelyn’s cheeks at his choice of words, as he knew it would. He liked when she blushed. It made her seem so…pure.
“Sally will sit on one corner of the blanket,” she directed, following him onto the material as he moved the basket where she indicated. She knelt beside it, her green muslin gown flowing out around her.
Saint gazed at her for a moment, at the pert, perfect coil of auburn hair atop her head, at the soft curve of her neck as she peered into the basket and drew out a bottle of wine, at the long, curling lashes concealing her eyes from him. He swallowed, his mouth abruptly going dry. Good God, he wanted her again, wanted to peel the gown from her shoulders and kiss every inch of her soft, smooth skin.
She looked up at him. “Are you going to sit?”
He sat, folding his legs in front of him. What was he doing with this goddess of grace? And what was she doing with him?
“You’re being very quiet,” she said, and handed him the wine bottle. “And that’s a fine cabernet.”
“It goes with the pheasant.” Saint reached into his pocket. “I do have a flask, if you prefer gin.”
“Wine is splendid.” Pulling two glasses from the basket, she raised up and leaned toward him. “Now you pour.”
He shook himself. Sweet Lucifer, he was behaving like a gawky village idiot. The Marquis of St. Aubyn did not moon over females or their fine bosoms, particularly after he’d bedded them. With a twist of his fingers he uncorked the bottle. “A cabernet tastes better on naked skin,” he drawled, “but since we’re not discussing that, I suppose glasses will do.”
The glasses wavered a little in her hands as he filled the fine crystal. “You’ve…picked a lovely day for our outing,” she said crisply.
“Are we talking about the weather now?” Saint set the bottle in the grass and took one of the glasses from her, making sure that he brushed her fingers as he did so. It seemed imperative that he touch her every few moments.
“The weather is always a safe topic.”
He took a sip of wine, gazing at her over the rim of the glass. “A ‘safe’ topic. Fascinating.”
Her eyes lowered. “No. It’s dull.”
Evidently he’d said the wrong thing. Being proper was even more difficult than he’d imagined. “No, really. This is new territory for me. Usually by now on a picnic I’m unclothed. Are there other ‘safe’ topics?”
She looked up at him again, suspicion in her clear gaze. “The weather is the safest, being that everyone knows something about it. Fashion is controversial, unless one laments the new decadence of style, and—”
“Decadence. I like decadence.”
Evelyn smiled. “I know. And bemoaning the waltz is safe with the older generation, for the same reason. Also, no one likes Bonaparte, and the Americas are very gauche.”
“So it’s safest to like nothing.”
She hesitated for a moment, taking far too large a swallow of her wine. “And to approve of nothing, and to do nothing.”
“My, my, Evelyn. I had no idea you were a cynic.” He tilted his head, trying to read her expression. “That’s not it, though, is it? That’s just what you say to your brother’s odd selection of political Bedlamites. Because you, my dear, are far more interesting than the dull creation you describe.”
To his surprise, her eyes filled with tears, though the apology for whatever he’d said wrong this time faded on his lips at the sight of her warm smile. Some very uncomfortable things began happening to his nether regions.
“That,
Lord St. Aubyn, is a very nice thing you just said.”
He reached into the basket to cover his sudden discomfiture. “How very unusual of me,” he muttered, and produced a sandwich. “Pheasant?”
Chapter 17
Nor was all love shut from him, though his days
Of passion had consumed themselves to dust.
—Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto III
The sun was edging the trees by the time Evie asked Saint to consult his pocket watch.
“Twenty minutes of four,” he said, shoving the expensive silver-etched timepiece back into his pocket as though it had done something he didn’t like.
She wasn’t terribly pleased by the news, either. Aside from the fact that she’d been enjoying the afternoon, she hadn’t even mentioned the children or the orphanage. He’d given her less than a month to convince him, and she’d just wasted nearly four hours. If she returned home late, though, Victor would make seeing Saint again more difficult than it already was.
“We need to go.”
With a scowl Saint climbed to his feet and offered her his hand. “I suppose kidnapping you is out of the question.” He pulled her upright, leaning to whisper in her ear. “That’s right, we tried something like that already, didn’t we?”
“Stop that,” she whispered back, protesting more because his intimate tone made her shiver than because of what he’d said. She’d begun to realize that he wouldn’t tell anyone their secret; if he did, he would lose some of the advantage over her that he valued so much.
He tossed the remains of their luncheon back into the basket, crumpled the blanket and dumped it on top, then hefted the basket up again. “I don’t suppose you’ll let me drag you into the shrubbery for a—”
“Saint!”
He glanced at Sally. “For a handshake, before we go?”
Of course her maid knew what the marquis meant, but Sally also knew his reputation and, Evie hoped, thought he made such scandalous propositions without provocation.
“No handshakes.”
She tucked her hand around his arm as they left Hyde Park. Even with Saint behaving himself, as he’d done to a remarkable degree this afternoon, she still felt like a kitten in the company of a sleek black panther. Claws sheathed or not, he was still a force to be reckoned with.
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