“Have you never helped your sisters to dress?” Lilith had always imagined Dunaway’s daughters giggling and gossiping as they’d gotten dressed in a big sunny bedchamber they shared.
“Annalise has her lady’s maid to dress her when she’s home from school, and Madeleine is only twelve and quite flat-chested. Mother doesn’t believe a girl should wear a corset until her bosom has begun to set in for fear of stunting her growth. What do I do?”
Lilith talked her through the art of lacing a corset, and, apparently, it took every particle of the girl’s concentration, for she kept silent until she’d finished tying the laces into a bow.
“There.” Sissy circled around Lilith, her fingers trailing over her waist as if to test the fit she’d helped to create. “You’ve such a lovely figure. And your complexion is so perfectly unblemished and luminous. Do you know, you might well be the prettiest woman I’ve ever seen?”
“Thank you.” Lilith accepted the compliment without an ounce of modesty or conceit. She was perfectly aware she’d been blessed to inherit the best of both her parents, two of the most beautiful people ever to grace the earth. It seemed only fitting, a balancing of assets and liabilities, considering those two beautiful people had been the poorest of parents.
“Your hair is so shiny and soft.” As if to prove the point, the earl’s daughter lifted a spiraling curl and rubbed it between her fingers. “Are you the only one of us to inherit Papa’s eyes?”
Lilith hid her surprise behind a smile while her heart began to race and perspiration, the bane of her existence, sprouted along her temples, under her arms and on the palms of her hands.
“I’ve never seen Harriet or Katherine,” Sissy continued as if she hadn’t shattered years of preconceived notions. “Do either of them have green eyes?”
“Harry has green eyes.” It wasn’t an admission of anything, only a simple fact.
“Do you call upon them often?”
“Why on earth would I call upon Harry and Kate?” A bead of sweat trickled from Lilith’s armpit to the edge of her corset.
“They are your sisters,” the girl replied as if it were that simple, as if anything in life were that simple.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she scoffed, turning away to grab for one of the dozen handkerchiefs stashed in the nightstand drawer. “Harry and Kate are no more my sisters than you and Annalise and Madeleine are my sisters.”
“Of course we’re sisters.”
“No, we are not.” Lilith whipped around to face the silly girl. God she was so blessedly young. Had she ever been that young, that absurdly naïve and innocent? “We are strangers who happen to have the same father, and that is all we will ever be.”
“But—”
“Now, what is it you need my help to see accomplished?” Lilith would have promised her anything in her power to give if she would only stop talking about sisters and who had inherited Dunaway’s eyes and calling upon Harry and Kate. As if they ought to take tea together and shop for bonnets and help one another to dress.
“I don’t wish to marry Baron Malleville.” Sissy’s words ran together into one long, multisyllabic muddle.
“I know he isn’t the duke Lady Dunaway hoped to catch for you.” Lilith pulled the amber silk gown she’d chosen for dinner over her head, muffling her words. “But there are currently only two unwed dukes of marriageable age in England and one of them is rumored to prefer the company of boys. The other is nearing eighty. Trust me when I say you do not want to attempt any sort of congress, marital or otherwise, with a doddering old duke.”
“I’ve never held out hope for a duke.”
Lilith tugged her gown into place, straightened the bodice and turned around to present her back to Sissy. “Is there a particular man you fancy marrying?”
“I haven’t a preference for any man. How could I when I haven’t even enjoyed a single Season in London?” Sissy set to work on the four tiny onyx buttons low on Lilith’s back.
“You ought to have been allowed at least one Season,” Lilith agreed. “If for no other reason than to test your wings and have a bit of fun. But in the end, your father would have contracted a marriage for you to a man who may or may not have been to your liking. So, I’m not certain I see what difference it makes whether it’s Baron Malleville or some other gentleman your father chooses.”
“He frightens me.”
“Because of the scar?” Lilith found the jagged scar oddly appealing. It softened his countenance, lent him an air of vulnerability otherwise lacking in his stern features.
“And he’s so tall and fat,” Sissy sniffed.
“There isn’t an ounce of fat on the man,” Lilith argued. “He’s all muscle and a lot of it.”
“Annalise says they call him Lord Malevolent, the Beast of Breckenridge,” Sissy whispered, her voice breaking. “They say he’s quite mad. They say he wanders the cliffs at midnight and scares off visitors with a pitchfork. They say he was engaged to be married and when the lady refused him he ravished her on the moors. And still she wouldn’t marry him.”
Damn it, was the girl crying? Lilith refused to look over her shoulder to find out. “They are always calling somebody something and making up tales which bear only the slightest resemblance to the truth.”
“He is a beast, a great big hulking brute, and I don’t want to marry him.” Sissy stepped away, signaling her task was complete.
There was nothing for it. Lilith would have to turn around. But if the girl was crying, she would leave her alone to do it.
Lilith could not abide crying. Not after years watching her mother cry over a man, a misfortune or a torn hem.
Sissy wasn’t crying, but her emotions were clearly in a jumble, her eyes bright and her cheeks blotchy. Something needed to be done before those emotions got the better of her and Lilith was forced to flee in her bare feet.
“What is it you think I can do to stave off this marriage?” Quickly she slipped her feet into black silk slippers and vaguely admired how pretty they looked beneath the strip of black lace at her hem.
“I was hoping you would think of something.”
“So I’m to devise a plan to save you and carry it out on my own?”
“I’m afraid you might be the only one of us to inherit Papa’s wily intelligence,” Sissy answered with a wobbly smile.
“Harry is far wilier than Dunaway and me together.” Well, that was rather more of an admission.
“What would Harry do?”
“Harry would steal Malleville from you just to see Dunaway bankrupted.”
“I don’t suppose you would—”
“Certainly not.” Lilith looped her hair into a knot at her crown and jabbed a handful of onyx pins into it to hold it in place. “I’ve no desire to marry The Beast of Breckenridge and spend all my days in this godforsaken wasteland. Nor will I intentionally bankrupt Dunaway, no matter how richly he deserves a comeuppance.”
“Oh, but Papa wouldn’t be bankrupted if Baron Malleville is the one to cry off,” Sissy replied. “If he jilts me, Papa’s debt to him is to be forgiven. It’s written into the marriage contract.”
“You’ve read the marriage contract?”
“Of course not. I heard Mother telling Lady Fallon there was no way to stop the marriage because no man in his right mind would give up an earl’s daughter and thirty thousand pounds plus three percent.”
“Then we can only hope Malleville is as mad as they say. But you do realize you will be ruined if Malleville jilts you?” Lilith affixed her jet earbobs, fanciful dangling little baubles she’d inherited from her great-grandmother.
“I’m an earl’s daughter. I won’t be ruined if a reclusive baron whispered to be a madman decides not to marry me,” Sissy replied with a giggle. “I’ll be like the heroines of those gothic novels. Saved from certain doom at the very last moment.”
“Let’s hope I can think of some way to see it done before the very last moment,” Lilith answered. “Come along, before we’r
e late for dinner.”
“What about your gloves?”
“I cannot abide gloves.” She’d be a shiny perspiring mess if she put on gloves. “Let’s be on our way. It’s a bit of a journey to the dining room.”
“Then you’ll help me?”
“Only because I cannot imagine having to listen to you lament your fate for all the days of my life.” Damn, that sounded like some sort of admission as well. As if she intended to keep up an acquaintance with Dunaway’s daughter after they returned to Town.
She needed to think of some way to save the silly girl quickly so that she could get her out of her hair and hurry back to her life in London.
TAMING BEAUTY
CHAPTER FOUR
As luck, or fate’s perverse sense of humor, would have it, inspiration struck not more than two minutes after Lilith walked into the parlor where Baron Malleville, his family and a dozen neighbors were gathered.
“I wonder where Papa is,” Sissy whispered, stopping at the threshold.
“Likely in the kitchen pantry with one of the scullery maids,” Lilith replied and immediately heard a gasp from the hallway.
She slowly pivoted around and came face to face with her past, or rather one small sliver of it from her own halcyon days. Before she’d fully comprehended the netherworld into which she’d been born and raised, and would in all likelihood inhabit for the remainder of her life.
“Good lord, Amelia Grimley.” Lilith greeted the gray-eyed, auburn-haired lady with a laugh. “I didn’t recognize you when we arrived, what with all the commotion and the little people scrambling about.”
“It’s lovely to see you again after all these years,” Amelia replied, taking Lilith’s bare hand between both her gloved hands. “Still averse to gloves, I see.”
“You are acquainted with one another?” Sissy asked in obvious confusion.
“Amelia and I attended Miss Beaumont’s Academy in London together.”
“You attended Miss Beaumont’s Academy?”
“From age sixteen to eighteen.”
“But I attended Miss Beaumont’s Academy.”
“I am not the least surprised, seeing as Lord Dunaway is one of the benefactors of the school.” Lilith made a mental notation to increase her contribution in light of Dunaway’s financial difficulties. He might yet see his debt to Malleville forgiven, but clearly he hadn’t a pot to piss in at present.
“I was a year behind Lilith,” Amelia said with a smile. “She was ever so popular. We all wanted to be just like her.”
“You were popular?” Sissy seemed boggled by the notion.
“I still am darling,” Lilith drawled.
“I only meant…Well, I’ve never thought about your life before…that is before I first became acquainted with you last year,” Sissy stammered.
“Did you think Dunaway found me in a cabbage patch the day we bumped into you at the museum?” Lilith teased, even as she returned her attention to Amelia and set her mind to sorting through the rumors that had circulated among the girls at Miss Beaumont’s Academy. “I cannot believe I didn’t make the connection straightaway. But I don’t believe Lord Dunaway ever made mention of Baron Malleville’s family name.”
“Before Jasper inherited, everyone outside the family called him Grim,” Amelia said.
“Grim,” Lilith repeated as another memory surfaced, only slightly more recent but somehow sharper, oddly clear and distinct.
Lord Morrissey, his handsome face split in a grin as he regaled her with tedious tales of his glory days. Most of them featuring winning hands of cards and fortunes stolen from callow youths unused to the ways of Town.
“Which was unfortunate because Jasper was always cheerful,” Amelia added. “Not to say he isn’t cheerful now, of course.”
“Of course,” Lilith agreed even as she turned about and found the man in question standing before the hearth with Dunaway, who must have entered from the terrace.
The two men were a study in opposites, the earl slender and golden and elegantly attired in a powder blue jacket and gray breeches while the baron was brawny and dark and had clearly pulled on the first jacket and trousers that came to hand. Both garments were a bit faded, or perhaps dusty from years tucked away at the back of his armoire. His cravat was wrinkled and limp, his tall black boots in dire need of a shine.
Still, he wasn’t precisely unattractive. In fact his face was rather interesting, all blunt angles and chiseled ridges. And if he would but smile, he might even be almost handsome.
“Oh, but I nearly forgot,” Amelia exclaimed. “I’ve come to call everyone in to dinner.”
* * * *
As the lady of least rank among the guests, Lilith expected to find herself seated somewhere in the middle of the table, perhaps beside the pasty-faced, flaxen-haired Mr. Pritchett who appeared to be tethered to Mr. Matthew Grimley by a very short leash.
She was seated in the middle of the table, but between Mr. Grimley himself and Mr. Rossiter, a devilishly handsome man with a wealth of chestnut curls. Both gentlemen proved charming dinner companions and Lilith was soon caught up in the tale of a pall-mall match gone terribly wrong.
“Three windows?” Lilith asked around the laughter she made no attempt to contain.
“The ball went clear through one pane in the French doors in Jasper’s study, the mallet through another,” Matthew assured her. “The ball rolled across the hall to the parlor, knocked into a table, and the candelabra sitting on it crashed through the window.”
“But she is only a tiny little thing,” Lilith protested. “How did she swing the mallet with enough force to toss it over the terrace all the way to the house?”
“When dealing with Meg, it is best never to ask how,” Rossiter replied wryly. “My daughter is a force of nature, like wind and rain.”
“And locusts, an entire swarm of them,” Malleville added without looking up from his plate of unevenly cooked beef.
Lilith had suspected he was following their conversation while pointedly ignoring Dunaway to his left and attempting, with little success, to make conversation with Sissy to his right.
Silly girl. Must she make her unhappiness so abundantly clear?
“For shame, Lord Malleville,” Lilith chided. “I doubt very much the little mite is quite as fearsome as a plague of locusts.”
“You obviously haven’t spent enough time with Meg,” he replied, pushing a lump of mashed potatoes around on his plate.
“In truth I haven’t spent any time around little persons,” Lilith replied. “I’m not the least ashamed to say they terrify me, much like spiders and mice.”
“But not locusts?”
“I’m not certain I actually know what a locust is, except that they are mentioned somewhere in the bible,” she admitted.
“Grasshoppers,” Malleville said succinctly
“Oh, some sort of insect then.”
“Have you never seen a grasshopper?” Matthew asked.
“I was born and raised in London.”
“But surely you’ve been to the country?” Susan Rossiter asked from across the table.
“Lord Dunaway and I went to Richmond,” Lilith replied. “What was it, perhaps three years ago?”
“Just over four,” Dunaway replied with a smile.
“Did we see any grasshoppers?”
“Not a one, but it was January.”
“There are grasshoppers in Hyde Park,” an elderly gentleman called from the far end of the table.
“Can one see them from a carriage?” Lilith asked, recognizing Sir John Parkhurst by his bushy white beard and great dome of a bald head. How odd Malleville should invite Rose’s father to dinner.
“They’ve been known to hop as high as five feet in the air,” replied a young man trying hard to appear a dandy.
“They’ll hop right into your carriage if you’ve left the top down,” a pretty middle-aged woman said.
“Hmm, that’s never happened to me, and I do like to ride abo
ut in an open carriage.”
“You’ve never been to a house party?” Sissy asked.
“Not in the country.”
“Do people throw house parties in Town?” the girl asked with a frown of confusion.
Lilith was fully aware she’d captured the entire table’s attention and decided she would be a fool in the extreme to waste so perfect an opportunity. “Oh, I almost forgot. I once took a day trip to Runnymede with my grandmother.”
“You’ve a grandmother?” asked the earl’s daughter, bless her naïve soul.
“Actually, I’ve two, though I’ve never met one, as she lives—”
“In the country,” chorused six or eight voices.
Lilith shot an appreciative smile around the table in reward. “Alabaster is far too frail to walk about, so we didn’t see any grasshoppers in Runnymede.”
“Alabaster?” Sissy repeated with a giggle. “You call your grandmother Alabaster?”
“But of course. It is her name, after all. Miss Alabaster Sinclair.”
She’d expected silence or perhaps a few gasps.
Mostly that was precisely what she received…for around three seconds anyway. Then whispered exclamations rounded the table, like the buzz of a swarm of bees.
Lord Malleville’s head shot up, his countenance all fire and brimstone.
Well, perhaps not brimstone, but certainly there was a fiery wash of color staining his cheeks, and his eyes, which she realized just then were quite a lovely dark gray, shot sparks.
Hot, burning pewter sparks.
“You are the granddaughter of Alabaster Sinclair?” Malleville demanded, his voice little more than a low rumble vibrating down the table.
“Do you know my grandmother, my lord?” Lilith asked, inflecting a wealth of innuendo into her voice just to set those sparks flickering.
How had she thought the man anything less than handsome?
He hadn’t looked directly at her since she’d turned away from Freddie and Reggie at the carriage, that’s how.
He’d barely glanced down at her from his great height when Dunaway made the introductions, kept his gaze exclusively on Sissy when they’d taken tea in the parlor and stared at his plate all through dinner.
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