He set his jaw. “Yes, that’s me,” he said with a hint of bitterness. “Every girl’s dream.”
Her head tilted to one side and she skimmed a considering glance over him. “You are, you know,” she said, returning her gaze to his face. “You’re just the sort of man girls dream about, and their ambitious parents, too. Snaring a duke, even if he is a bit tarnished, would be the coup de grâce for any family. Hell, thousands of women would marry you for your money alone.”
“I would not be inclined to a girl of that sort.”
“Rosalind Drummond was just that sort! I daresay if Creighton hadn’t come along so soon, you’d have been able to win her back by the end of the season. Felicia Vale is just the same, though she hasn’t Rosalind’s brains. Neither of them is worthy of you. Honestly,” she added with a hint of impatience, “what is it about melting brown eyes that makes your judgment go utterly awry?”
“That’s nonsense!”
“Is it? Don’t tell me Felicia’s eyes weren’t tempting you to ask Lady Vale for an introduction.”
God, he thought in horror, was he that shallow? The idea didn’t bear thinking about. “You don’t have brown eyes,” he pointed out, “and history proves that when it comes to you, my judgment is not awry, it’s nonexistent. And since we are on the subject of my taste in women, Beatrix—if I understand you correctly—is just another mercenary woman who lied to me.”
“Trix? No, she’s not mercenary in the least, but . . .” Julia paused, considering. “But yes, in a way, she did lie to you.”
“She’s your own cousin. Yet you deem her dishonest?”
“There are different kinds of lies. Don’t misunderstand me. I love Trix like a sister, and I don’t think she’s ever uttered a deliberate lie in her life. But when I introduced her to you at the St. Ives Ball, she was still feeling the pangs of heartache over Sunderland going off to Egypt, not to mention terrible grief and loss over the death of her father. She was at the lowest point of her life, and then you came along, just the right balm to soothe her wounded feminine pride and protect her from an uncertain future, the perfect hero charging in to save her. She convinced herself that she could be happy with you, but it was a lie, because the only man who’s ever made her happy is Sunderland. As for you, you took one look into Trix’s big, sad eyes, and you were captivated. But that’s all.”
“All? How do you know I wasn’t madly in love with her?”
Her answer was simple, direct, and brutal. “Because when Sunderland came back and she broke her engagement to you, you didn’t fight to keep her.”
“God,” he choked, “you do give your opinions honestly, don’t you, Baroness?”
“You asked,” she said, and shrugged, taking a sip of champagne and another pull on her cigarette. “I just wish you’d be equally honest about yourself when it comes to matters of romance. You’re a lot like Trix, you know. Honorable and good and trying so hard to always do the right thing, the dutiful thing. Striving all your life to live up to everyone’s expectations and trying to believe virtue is its own reward.”
“So it is.”
She made a sound of derision. “You like to think it is. That’s why you accepted my invitation for a picnic that day. You wanted to prove to yourself you could resist me, and you wanted to pat yourself on the back for your virtuous nature afterward.”
He inhaled sharply, damning both her perspicacity and his own arrogance. “Well, I was appropriately punished for my conceit in that regard, wasn’t I?”
Her mouth took on a sulky curve. “You did what you secretly wanted to do. You’d be happier if you’d be honest enough with yourself to admit that under all the gentlemanly honor you revere, you long for adventure and excitement and a taste now and then of the forbidden fruit.”
“Getting drunk and sleeping with a married woman and being publicly humiliated for it is the sort of adventure I could well do without! You talk as if what happened was merely some delicious, harmless little romp in the country, but it wasn’t. You used me,” he accused in a hard, tight voice, angry with her and even more angry with himself. “You wanted a divorce, and the only way you could obtain it was by taking a new lover and arranging for Yardley to discover your adultery. For reasons I cannot fathom, you chose me to be your pawn.”
She didn’t deny it. She didn’t try to defend herself. She said nothing, and her silence only fueled his anger.
“I have to admire your talent for strategy,” he went on. “Yardley had overlooked your previous lovers, but how could he overlook it when he found you actually in bed with another man? And then, just to be doubly sure, you gave the whole sordid story to the gutter press, causing a scandal so blatant Yardley had no choice but to set you aside. You played me, and you played him, moving us around like pieces on a chessboard. You, madam, are a female Iago!”
Hurt shimmered across her face, and his shame deepened. He looked away. “I’m sorry,” he apologized tightly, and worked to force his emotions back into governable order before he looked at her again. “That was uncalled for.”
“No, it wasn’t.” She lifted her cigarette, then changed her mind and crushed it out on the step below the one where she sat. “Why apologize for telling the truth? I did and I am all of which you accused me.”
“Why did you do it? I can appreciate that your marriage was unhappy, but breaking it caused pain and humiliation not only to you and me, but also to two innocent people. Doesn’t that bother you? Don’t you care?”
She jerked, her chin lifting with the same defiance he’d seen her display that day in the divorce court. “My husband was a bastard,” she said, her pale violet eyes glittering like gray steel in the dim light, and her voice was so hard and cold it chilled him. “I loathed that man to the very core, and I cannot work up even a tiny pang of conscience over any pain or humiliation he suffered. I’m sorry about Lady Rosalind, though I know her well enough to know she’s probably not worth my regret, or yours, either. And she seems to have recovered nicely from the experience, for she’s engaged again, I hear. So, no, to answer your question, I don’t care. I would do it all over again.”
He stared at her, shaking his head in disbelief at her icy disdain and lack of remorse. “What did your husband do to make you hate him so?”
“What did he do?” she echoed, and with mercurial suddenness, her face changed. The cold glint in her eyes vanished as if it had never been, and her disdain gave way to amusement. “Fucked the chambermaids, of course,” she said lightly, laughing as if it was all a joke. “Don’t they all?”
“Many do,” he was forced to agree, concluding that Yardley was one of them, but he didn’t see what was amusing about it. “But not all.”
“Well, you won’t,” she said, and waved her hand toward the ballroom. “Go. Stop wasting your time with me. Go find your duchess.”
He hesitated, feeling as if there was more to be said, but he decided they’d both said quite enough already. He turned away.
“But promise me something,” she said as he started past her up the steps.
He stopped, but he did not look at her. “What’s that?”
“Why anyone would want to marry at all baffles me, I confess, and my advice would be not to bother. But if you must marry—and I can see you are quite determined to do so—promise me you’ll marry for love and no other reason, someone worthy of you who would make you happy. Believe it or not, I want you to be happy, for I do like you, you know. I always have.”
He was inclined to doubt that, and her desire for his happiness seemed a bit late in the day to be genuine, but he didn’t argue the point. “I am sure that if I marry a woman whose background and interests match my own, and if we share fondness and affection, genuine love will surely follow.”
“Either that,” she said dryly, “or you’ll bore each other to death. I wouldn’t call that love.”
“Your view of love and mine are obviously different, Lady Yardley. Good night.”
Once again he moved to l
eave, but to his astonishment, she reached out and actually put a hand on his leg to stop him. He froze and closed his eyes, arousal stirring inside him at her touch. He fought it, hating that she could still evoke with the touch of her hand what had already destroyed his honor and hurt his reputation, hating that she could move him like a chess piece, controlling in him what he could not seem to control in himself.
“An unhappy marriage is hell, Aidan,” she said, her fingers curled around his shin. “I should know. Promise me you won’t do what I did.”
He didn’t reply, for there was nothing to say. He was a duke, and he had a duty to marry, with love or without it. Slowly, he pulled away from her touch and went back inside without giving her the promise she’d asked for. He never made promises he wasn’t sure he could keep.
It still hurt to see him, Julia realized as she watched him go, even seven months after that day in court. He hated her now. She couldn’t blame him, of course, but it hurt just the same.
In the wake of his departure, his words lingered, echoing in the cool spring air.
Yes, that’s me. Every girl’s dream.
She’d heard the bitter, sarcastic tinge in those words, and that hurt, too. She leaned back, picturing him as he’d stood before her just moments ago, seeing again his splendid square jaw, the tawny glints in his dark brown hair, the wide set of his shoulders. She thought of his impeccably tailored black evening suit and snowy white linen shirt, remembering just what his body looked like without them—the chiseled muscles of his chest and abdomen, his tapered waist and long, strong legs. It was a body honed by the playing fields of Eton, the rowing oars of Oxford, and the tennis championships at St. Ives and Wimbledon, a body any woman ought to be able to appreciate and take pleasure in, but that day at her cottage she’d been unable to do so. Pleasure of that sort had long ago been stripped from her.
That had nothing to do with Aidan. He was every girl’s dream even if he couldn’t see it. He was also a gentleman down to his bones, the sort who believed in the old school tie, playing the game, and always doing the right thing, no matter what it cost him. But he also had a bit of the devil in him, a darker side that wanted the forbidden. He’d always wanted her, and from their very first meeting thirteen years ago, she’d known it. When given the chance, she’d exploited that knowledge for her own purposes with perfect finesse.
A female Iago.
His description stung, but it was apt. If Shakespeare’s Iago could be played as a soul in hell, driven, dark, and desperate, willing to do anything, willing to use anyone, in order to escape from that hell, then yes, she had been Iago, the consummate manipulator, perfect in her part from start to finish.
God help her.
Chapter Three
The moment Aidan returned to the ballroom, he realized he could not remain there. He could not smile, and request introductions, and dance with young ladies, not when desire for that woman was flooding through his body, along with a generous amount of anger and frustration. Nor could he simply go home. At this hour of the evening, the ball was an absolute crush. It would take him an hour just to have his carriage brought around.
He crossed to the other side of the ballroom, ignoring any speculative glances he received along the way, and walked out, heading down the corridor to the card room. It was also a smoking room, but the haze of smoke seemed a tolerable option to him at present. He suspected even Lady Yardley wouldn’t have the brass to come into a bastion reserved exclusively for gentlemen. Besides, cards were an excellent diversion.
He paused in the doorway, noting with a glance around that all the tables were fully occupied. He caught sight of the Duke of Scarborough on the other side of the room, lounging by the fireplace with a whiskey in his hand, and he made his way in that direction. The wild-eyed, disreputable Scarborough was as great a contrast to himself as could be imagined, but he made an excellent card partner.
“Scarborough,” he greeted with a bow. “Waiting for a game?”
“I am.” The other man lifted his glass, took a hefty swallow, and grimaced. “Thank God there’s cards. It’s the only way to get through one of these beastly things.”
“Beastly things?” Aidan smiled. “You mean a public ball?”
“I mean any ball at all. I believe if I have to attend another one of these affairs, I’ll go mad. And it’s only May.”
He took another drink and scowled. “It’s a hellish business, Trathen, being in charge of a debutante.”
This reference to the other man’s American ward gave Aidan pause. He’d seen the girl out driving with her mother and Scarborough in Hyde Park a few days earlier, and Miss Annabel Wheaton, if he recalled correctly, was a pretty woman, demure and sweet-looking, with chestnut-brown hair. He wondered what color her eyes might be, but then Julia’s words about his preference for dark eyes came back to him, and he gave an exasperated sigh.
Damn that woman and her knowledge of his tastes. Shoving her out of his mind, he glanced over the various tables. “Are you looking to put together a whist game?”
“I’d prefer auction bridge, if I can find a partner with even a decent understanding of the strategy.”
“Ouch,” Aidan murmured dryly. “That hurts, Scarborough.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” the other man assured him, laughing as he touched his free hand to his forehead. “I wasn’t impugning your knowledge of cards. On the contrary, you are one of the few men in London who comprehends the concept of bidding hands and leading the proper cards.”
“Then would you be interested in partnering with me for a few hands?”
“I’d adore it, but you know how I run, old chap. Deep stakes. Very reckless, I know, but there it is.”
Aidan shrugged, not minding a high-stakes game at this particular moment. “I can afford it, and besides, twenty-five percent of the winnings are donated to the London hospitals.”
“Still, extravagant gambling isn’t your cup of tea, really, is it?”
“Perhaps you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”
One of Scarborough’s devilish black brows lifted in surprise. “Fair enough,” he murmured, and clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s do a good turn for the hospitals by fleecing some of these idiotic young dandies out of their quarterly allowance, shall we?”
* * *
Cards provided Aidan with plenty of distraction for the remainder of the evening, but in the days that followed the May Day Ball, Lady Yardley proved harder to dismiss from his mind.
Upon waking, the sight of his bed linens evoked the image of her naked in bed beside him at her cottage. The sight of a motorcar in the street as he traveled back and forth to his offices in the Strand made him think of her Mercedes and the wild way she drove it. Any white dress recalled to his mind the way she’d looked coming out of the water that afternoon at Gwithian Cove, her wet muslin frock clinging to her body like a second skin. He’d worked so hard to put the events of that day behind him, yet now, after one encounter with her, it seemed as if his efforts all had been for naught.
Aidan looked away from the work on his desk to stare out the window of his office, seeing past the wet spring day, past that day in the divorce court, past the hot August afternoon at her cottage, all the way back to the beginning, to the summer he was seventeen and the footbridge in Dorset where he’d first met her.
In fact, he could bring to mind every time he’d seen her over the years. The ball at St. Ives where he’d danced with her cousin because she was married. The house party at Lord Marlowe’s villa where she’d played bawdy ragtime on the piano and he’d tried to keep his wits about him. The day before their picnic when she’d waved at him across the High Street in St. Ives and he’d crossed the street to speak to her even though he’d sensed he was making a huge mistake. The picnic, and watching her come out of the water, naked under that wet, white muslin dress.
All these incidents were vivid in his mind, so vivid that they might have happened hours rath
er than months and years ago. But he didn’t really know the reason for such clarity.
Lady Yardley was beautiful, yes, but she was also brash, impudent, and immoral. She danced until dawn and smoked like a chimney and had never shown the least regard for her husband, her marriage vows, or the conventions of society. Yet, despite the fact that she seemed to possess all the traits in a woman he most disliked, despite the months or years that passed between their chance encounters, he could never seem to quite forget her. Why?
It doesn’t matter, he told himself, and with an effort, he returned his attention to the business that had brought him into his offices this afternoon. He was supposed to meet with Lord Marlowe in three days to complete the negotiations for Trathen Mills to supply the paper to Marlowe Publishing during the coming year. Marlowe had sent over a counteroffer in response to his bid, and he needed to review it, but Aidan had barely reached for the viscount’s proposal before his door opened and his secretary came bustling in.
There really was no other way to describe it. Mr. Charles Lambert was an energetic, bespectacled young man with a keen, intelligent face rather reminiscent of a greyhound. His sleeves were always rolled back, a pencil was always tucked behind his right ear, and a clipboard with paper was as much of an accessory to his daily apparel as a parasol was to a young lady’s walking ensemble.
“I’ve sorted the afternoon post, Your Grace,” Lambert announced as he approached the desk, his ever-present clipboard tucked under one arm, Aidan’s appointment book under the other, and an enormous bundle of papers in his hands. “It’s a bit more than usual,” he added as he set the pile of correspondence on the desk. “Invitations, mostly.”
“Due to my appearance at the May Day Ball, no doubt.”
Scandal of the Year Page 3
