“On the estate just to the north of Breckenridge,” he answered, his voice clipped and quiet. “I lost Northridge to Morrissey along with the fortune I’d inherited from my father not six month previously.”
“Who owns Northridge now?” Even as Lilith asked the question, the answer came to her. So obvious, it was.
“Sir John Parkhurst.”
“And as his oldest daughter, Rose, will one day inherit the estate,” she murmured, unsettled by all Malleville had lost. “Your union would have returned Northridge to your family, along with your honor and reputation and all the rest of it.”
The ninth Baron Malleville gave a sharp nod in reply.
“I suppose Rose was raised with the knowledge she would one day be your baroness?” Lilith asked, though, again, there was no need to pose the question.
“I first proposed the match to Sir John the day he took up residence at Northridge,” Malleville replied after a slight pause in which she imagined he considered how much to tell a woman who hadn’t any compunction about airing her family’s dirty linen. “Rose was eight to my four and twenty. I’d been the baron only two years, long enough to lose most of what my forebears had built up over hundreds of years, but not long enough to rebuild even a fraction of it.”
“How long did Sir John make you wait?”
“He agreed to the match three years later, when I’d begun to see a profit on the land and put away a meager sum for the future.”
“And you waited seven more years for Rose to reach her majority only to lose both your bride and your mother’s birthright.”
“Sir John is a fair man and has agreed to allow me to buy Northridge.”
“Never say the price is thirty thousand pounds,” Lilith whispered.
“At three percent per annum over five years.”
Lilith wanted to turn and walk away, run even. As fast and faraway as she possibly could, until she reached London and the life she’d been quietly leading before she’d allowed Dunaway to embroil her in his schemes.
Instead, she drew in a stuttering breath and straightened her spine. “Sissy wasn’t raised to be your wife, to live this sort of life. She was raised to throw balls and host musicales. To donate her time to worthy charitable causes, dress in the latest fashions, attend the theater on opening night, to be an asset on the arm of a gentleman of wealth and privilege.”
“And what sort of life were you raised for?” He turned to face Lilith, his hands fisting at his sides and his chest heaving.
“This has nothing to do with me and my life,” Lilith replied, waving away his words with one trembling hand while the other twisted in her skirts. “Sissy will be miserable tucked away in the country, with no society to speak of and only a mercantile in which to shop for dresses and trinkets.”
“Do you think I don’t know I cannot make her happy?” Malleville’s voice was a terrible rumble of sound, crackling with fury.
“Never mind making Sissy happy,” Lilith snapped, her temper unraveling around the edges. “You will not be happy. Sissy will see to that, not out of malice or spite but because misery breeds misery. You deserve better than a life of unending sorrow and bitterness and regret.”
Malleville reached for Lilith, his hands closing around her upper arms, lifting her up on her toes and dragging her against his chest. He held her there, his heart hammering where their bodies joined, his eyes glowing like smelting pewter and a pulse ticking along his jaw.
His warm breath billowed over her upturned face, caressing her cheeks and lips. His fingers flexed on her arms, pulling her closer as his head dipped.
“What are you doing?” Lilith hissed as his intention became all too clear.
“I don’t know anymore,” he admitted on a groan, his gaze colliding with hers, holding her captive.
Or perhaps it was she holding him captive. If so, she had only a fraction of a second to release him before catastrophe struck. “Well, whatever it is, stop and think about the consequences.”
“Christ,” Jasper breathed, releasing Lilith so suddenly she stumbled back and nearly lost her footing on the uneven ground.
His arm snaked out, to steady her, to stop her withdrawal or reel her in close once more. She didn’t know, nor did it matter as it was all a piece of the same terrible cataclysm waiting to ruin both their lives.
Lilith swatted his hand and carefully backed away from temptation. One step, two steps, three.
Then she turned and walked away, leaving the Beast of Breckenridge standing in the churchyard before the graves of his parents while the voices of his family rose amid those of his countrymen, for whom he’d fought a duel and come away scarred and perhaps a bit mad.
TAMING BEAUTY
CHAPTER EIGHT
Lilith had never had occasion to play pall-mall, what with the lamentable dearth of country house parties littering her past.
The game seemed simple enough, hit a ball around the patchy, weed-riddled south lawn, which as luck or hindsight would have it did not face the wall of glass doors leading to Jasper’s study. Aim for the bent and twisted wickets stuck in the ground at angles designed to aggravate a novice player. Finish the course before one’s opponents, all of whom were intent upon knocking her ball clear to the cliffs and into the sea.
“Lord Malleville has proven himself to be quite stubborn.” Lilith raised a mallet that had already imbedded two splinters in her hand and took aim at the ball which might at one time have been painted green but was now merely speckled.
“You aren’t giving up, are you?” Sissy hissed. “You said you would lay waste to the baron’s determination.”
“Yes, well his determination is quite strong.” Lilith aimed for Matthew Grimley’s blue, speckled ball and swung with all her might, smiling as she knocked it beneath a thorny rosebush. Her ball careened toward her next wicket, stopping mere inches from the final, mangled arch.
“Huzzah for Princess Lilith,” Meg Rossiter hollered, jumping up and down on the bench her father had brought around for her to sit quietly upon, thereby not distracting the players.
Lilith wasn’t quite certain how it had come about, but since the children had returned from Church five days past, they’d taken it into their little ginger heads to make a pet of her. Perhaps it was boredom brought on by the four days of almost relentless rain that had kept them indoors. Mayhap it was simply the novelty of a new toy one feels compelled to play with until every last bit of fun is wrested from the thing. Whatever the reason for Lilith’s sudden popularity with the sticky fingered little creatures, she hadn’t had a waking moment to herself in days. If Meg wasn’t shadowing her from room to room, chattering away about China and lost teeth and worlds spinning off their axes, Charlie and Henry were peppering her with questions about mudlarking along the beach and begging her to ask the cook to serve oysters and ale at breakfast.
Even little Davie had joined in the torment, toddling up to her and climbing into her lap to pet and poke at her with sticky fingers every time she made the mistake of sitting down.
Only baby Annie seemed able to resist whatever charms the children mistakenly thought she possessed. In fact, the baby took to hollering whenever she was carried into a room in which Lilith had the effrontery to be occupying.
It was proving nearly as difficult to avoid, ignore or otherwise evade the children’s attentions as it was to ruffle Lord Malleville’s auburn feathers.
Not that she’d made more than a token effort on those rare occasions they inhabited the same general vicinity. Which, as his lordship was obviously intent upon pretending she did not exist, was only at dinner.
And then, as if to make up for all the hours between one evening and the next, the man watched her every move, his gaze inexorably fastened upon her, only looking away when not to do so would be a grave offense against even the most lax standard of manners. He spoke not a word to her, merely smiled grimly at each lurid tale she offered up over dinner, all of them starring her various relations. Some of the ane
cdotes were accurate down to the color of a certain earl’s smalls while others were no more than family lore embellished throughout the years.
Malleville put in not a single appearance on her balcony overlooking the garden she was coming to think of as her own private jungle. She’d taken to strolling through the hip high weeds and flowers in the morning while she sipped her Turkish coffee, fruitlessly hoping she might spy him standing at the French doors watching her from the safety of his study.
“You’ve done nothing more than tell naughty tales about your mother and grandmother,” Sissy said, her blue eyes blinking furiously. “Who cares if a Prussian prince was found on his knees beneath the table linen at some old lady’s dinner? That is no more than a breach of etiquette, the prince crawling about looking for his fork beneath your grandmother’s skirts when he ought to have had a servant bring him another.”
Lilith rolled her eyes at the girl’s naiveté.
“And that nonsense about your mother riding through Hyde Park altogether unclothed,” Sissy continued, whacking away at her ball with no forethought whatsoever, landing it alongside Matthew’s. “You borrowed the tale, exaggerating the events and adding those two doddering old men dueling over her honor.”
“It wasn’t Gwendolyn’s honor they were dueling over, nor do her exploits require any exaggeration whatsoever,” Lilith replied. “And I am not the one who trotted out that particular fairytale.”
“My point exactly. You are doing precious little to help me and we’ve only six more days until utter catastrophe.”
“You’ve only six more days,” Lilith corrected, all the while knowing utter catastrophe had come and gone. To the accompaniment of hymns and dancing daffodils. “I shall return to London and step right back into my life.”
“You promised and now you’re just giving up without even truly trying.” Was that a tear hovering on her blonde lashes? How had Dunaway sired so emotional a child, and with the countess, no less?
“Oh, for mercy sake,” Lilith exclaimed. “I only said Lord Malleville is more stubborn than I’d anticipated. I did not say I am giving up.”
“Perhaps if you were to—”
“Do not suggest I seduce the man.”
“Goodness, I would never suggest anything so vile,” Sissy replied. “Truly, I cannot even imagine how you could think of such a thing.”
Lilith might have told her she’d been thinking of little else since she’d arrived at Breckenridge and caught her first glimpse of the wounded beast.
Honestly, how much temptation was a woman raised to be a temptress expected to resist? It had gone against her very nature to remind Malleville of the consequences of kissing her outside a church where his entire family, nay the entire population of his world, might bear witness.
“Though, perhaps you might flirt with him a bit,” Sissy mused around the nail she was chewing, a habit she shared with Kate. “Get him alone long enough to allow him to steal a kiss or two.”
Only he wouldn’t need to steal a kiss as Lilith would likely beg him for one the moment they were alone. One would lead to another and before either of them quite realized it they’d be rolling around on whatever surface lay nearby. A settee. A desk or table. A daffodil strewn churchyard.
“Lilith, you’re glowing,” Sissy whispered.
Lilith whipped out the little square of linen tucked into her bodice. She patted at her temples before swiping the handkerchief around her neck. “I’m perspiring. Ladies do perspire, contrary to all of Miss Beaumont’s arguments to the contrary.”
“I’ve seen the way Lord Malleville looks at you,” Sissy continued, relentless as a terrier cornering a rat. “As if he’d like to eat you up. Can you imagine how awkward family dinners will be if I am forced to marry him?”
Lilith didn’t bother to tell the girl there would be no family dinners in their future. No matter how many times, or in how many ways, she’d tried to explain the facts of life to the earl’s daughter, the thick-headed chit insisted upon sprinkling every conversation with such ridiculous sentiments.
“I can’t be the only one to notice his attention is on the wrong sister. Might we not use that to our advantage? Mother is always saying the appearance of impropriety is as damaging as impropriety itself.”
“The countess has much to answer for,” Lilith replied. “The appearance of impropriety is nowhere near as damaging as impropriety itself. And Lord Malleville will not forego thirty thousand pounds plus three percent simply because someone, or an entire dining room or church full of someones, makes mention of the manner in which he looks upon me. But never fear, I’ve already set in motion a plan to see you freed from the shackles of this particular marriage.”
“But what if that one works no better than your current plan?” Sissy asked. “No, you’re right. You’ll just have to entice him to kiss you.”
“I never said I would entice him to kiss me.”
“Maybe allow him to touch your bosom. On the outside of your gown, of course.”
“Are you suggesting I compromise Lord Malleville in hopes he jilts you to do the honorable thing and marry me?”
“You don’t have to marry him, only lead him to believe you will long enough for him release me and forgive Papa’s debt.”
“Entice him, entrap him, string him along and, for an encore, pauper him?” Lilith cried, her voice rising as her temper sparked, suddenly and inexplicably.
“Do you truly think you could?” Sissy’s eyes glowed with glee. “Pretend for days or even weeks?”
“Look around you,” Lilith ordered, waving one hand about to indicate their surroundings. “Malleville’s gardens are untended and his house is falling to ruins. Susan was forced to marry a man without title or wealth because her dowry, if she was in possession of any such thing, was middling at best. The baron managed to send Matthew to university and give Amelia a London Season. But do you truly believe she now rusticates in the country, forgoing any possibility of an advantageous marriage, by choice?”
“None of that is my fault, or even Papa’s fault.”
It was an altogether familiar refrain that had Lilith’s vision going blurry as her sparking temper ignited and caught fire.
“No, Malleville is to blame. He buggered himself royally all on his own, but he shouldered that blame alone as well.” Lilith could not seem to halt the words pouring from her lips, no matter she was vaguely aware the game had ceased and all eyes were firmly turned in their direction. “He took responsibility as a man with a family should do and set about making things right. I don’t know how he did it, but I imagine it was years of hard work, the likes of which most gentlemen would not recognize.”
“Then he ought to have married some local miss who would appreciate all that toiling and working and what not,” Sissy replied mulishly, crossing her arms over her bosom.
“He intended to marry just such a lady. A pretty Cornish girl, daughter to a local gentleman who’d been betrothed to him nearly half her life and brought with her a dowry worth more than thirty, forty or even a hundred thousand pounds. And he would have, had Dunaway not gotten beneath her skirts and crowed about it all over Town.”
“Still, why did he have to empty the family coffers to buy me?”
“He’s a man, stupid and asinine the lot of them,” Lilith shrieked. “If they are not blinded by lust, it is pride or honor or one of a hundred other convoluted notions only they comprehend. It hardly matters why. The fact is Malleville did deplete his fortune buying himself an earl’s daughter for a bride. And he is not going to break the marriage contract on the strength of a few kisses and a quick grope of my breasts. Nor will I whore myself out to save you from a fate far better than that Dunaway’s other daughters will face when, and if, they marry!”
Sissy blinked and took a step back, her mouth falling open to form a perfect little pink O of surprise. All was quiet but for the whisper of the breeze through the grass and birds chirping in some distant tree.
Lilith tilted he
r head back and drew in a deep breath, expelling it on a fractured sigh.
The sky was a startling, lovely shade of blue. As blue as the bouquet of wilted hydrangeas a freckle-faced boy had given her once, long ago. Patrick had been his name, Patrick O’Riley. He’d been down from university, visiting London for the first time. Lord, how sweet and naïve he’d been, calling upon her and taking tea in Gwendolyn’s scarlet and gold parlor, oblivious to the fact he was in the home of London’s premier courtesan.
“What’s a grope, Princess Lilith?”
Meg’s voice shattered both the silence and the odd memory.
“A grope is what happens to girls who ignore their instincts and allow themselves to be led down the primrose path,” Lilith answered, lowering her head to find the entirety of Malleville’s family looking at her from various locals upon the lawn. “Be sure to stay off primrose paths as they are invariably twisted and rutted and lined with thorns.”
“Er, I believe it’s your shot, Lilith,” Matthew said with a smile and a wink.
It was a shame he hadn’t a preference for females. Harry needed a gentle sort of husband, one who might smooth her jagged edges and buff away the fine cracks.
“So it is,” Lilith agreed, crossing the lawn as if she hadn’t a care in the world. As if she hadn’t engaged in a shouting match with Dunaway’s spoiled, petulant daughter. About kissing and groping and enticing and entrapping.
Her ball was barely six inches from the wicket, six relatively weed-free, smooth inches. It needed but a soft tap to send it gently rolling through the arch.
Lilith swung the mallet back and brought it down with all her might.
The crack of wood on wood reverberated around the lawn.
The little, green, speckled ball, chosen by Sissy because it matched her eyes, sailed over the wicket and through the air, growing smaller and smaller until it landed and disappeared in the tall grass sprouting along the cliffs in the distance. Likely splashing into the ocean she’d yet to see, what with the weather proving as tempestuous as Gwendolyn on a good day.
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