“Can a man be hanged for passing wind?” Lady Priscilla interrupted the silence. “Truly?”
“Perhaps not hung, but certainly banished from all good society,” Alabaster replied. “Why, just ask the Duke of Wherewithal.”
“I don’t know as I’ve ever heard of the Duke of Wherewithal,” Rossiter said.
“Precisely my point, child,” Alabaster replied. “Very few people below the age of sixty have heard of dear old Withy, who isn’t actually a duke but rather the natural son of the third Duke of Cheltenham.”
“As in he would have been duke had his mother had the wherewithal to bring His Grace up to scratch?” Harry asked with a laugh.
“Actresses rarely bring dukes up to scratch. Still, Withy was quite the infamous rake about Town in his heyday.”
“And he was banished for flatulence?” Matthew asked.
“Flatulence not of his own making,” Alabaster replied. “It was his brother, the fourth Duke of Cheltenham who broke wind and pointed a finger at Withy. As you might surmise, fisticuffs ensued and both gentlemen were exiled from court.”
“Is Cheltenham the portly fellow with the bushy sideburns and the giant wart on his nose who rides about Town on a bow-backed white horse?” Harry asked.
“Honestly, Harry, one day your inability to put names to faces will get you into trouble,” Kate answered with the air of one whose patience had been sorely tested. “His Grace is the frail man forever dressed as if he is on his way to pay court to some king from the last century.”
“That fussy little man was exiled from court over broken wind?” Harry asked doubtfully.
“It was but one skirmish in a long line of such petty, childish skirmishes,” Alabaster said. “Reputedly begun when the brothers were still in short pants battling over the scraps of their father’s attention. If they weren’t fighting over some priceless work of art or that derelict piece of property wedged between their townhouses, they were fighting over a lady’s affections. The wind debacle was simply the straw which broke the camel’s back. Or the king’s as the case may be.”
“Were you one of the ladies over whom they fought?” Kate posed what Jasper considered to be an all-too obvious and all-too unnecessary question.
“So the story goes, but my mother’s watchful eye kept me from falling into either of their arms, let alone their beds, before they were banished.” Alabaster’s voice held an edge to it, one Jasper was unable to identify. “And I was well-settled with Viscount Aberdeen by the time Cheltenham had earned his way back into society’s good graces.”
“What of Wherewithal?” Matthew asked. “Did he earn his way back?”
“Withy has happily lived on the fringes for more than forty years, harassing and provoking his brother into further mischief every chance he gets.”
“Wait, are these the same brothers who fought a duel over Gwendolyn Aberdeen the morning she rode through Hyde Park in the altogether?” Pritchett asked.
“I saved my daughter from the both of them, even if I couldn’t save her from her own foolish vanity,” Alabaster replied. “One would think the brothers had long since learned their lesson, but their rivalry continues to run amuck to this day.”
“Are they still up to mischief with the ladies?” Lady Priscilla asked, wrinkling her nose in distaste. “They must be quite elderly.”
“Doddering old men.” Lilith flipped her fan open once more, slowly plying it back and forth as if she hadn’t a care in the world, as if she hadn’t intentionally sent her grandmother down a road that suddenly seemed fraught with hazardous twists and strewn with razor-sharp thorns. “And one of them a duke.”
Lady Priscilla blinked, her pretty little mouth fell open and an angry, mottled flush spread up her neck, skimmed along her square jaw and crested her cheeks. A tiny little squeak tripped off her lips, the sound rather like that a puppy makes when kicked, however accidently.
“Goodness, Sissy, have we shocked you speechless?” Lilith asked with a laugh, low and husky and dripping disdain. “Alabaster, we must mark the date down and celebrate it annually. The Day One of Dunaway’s Daughters was Dumbstruck has a nice ring to it.”
Instinctively, Jasper reached for Lilith, wanting only to soothe and protect her from the queer turn the conversation had taken, from the heavy tension settling around the table.
Lilith recoiled, her legs curling away from his touch, her eyes flashing fire over the fan she continued to ply before her face, slowly and methodically as if in cadence with a tempo locked inside her head.
“Lilith, surely you did not…the Duke of Cheltenham…he cannot be…” Lady Priscilla could not get the words out, but it hardly seemed to matter as everyone around the table, including Jasper whose wits had been scattered on the Cornish breeze, suddenly went still and silent.
“Do you think you are the first girl whose innocence and future were bargained away to settle someone else’s debt?” Lilith asked with what might have been either curiosity or surprise, or a bit of both. “Can you truly be so naïve as that?”
“Papa would not sell you to an old man,” Lady Priscilla protested desperately. “He wouldn’t. You’re his favorite!”
“How many times must I tell you Dunaway did not find me in a cabbage patch,” Lilith replied with a roll of her eyes. “I have a mother, such as she is, and like your mother, Gwendolyn wanted a duke for her daughter. The only difference is the skills we were taught and the market upon which our wares were displayed.”
Lady Priscilla’s eyes filled, her hands waving about as if seeking something or someone to hold onto as her world tipped on its axis.
Jasper knew precisely how the poor girl felt when his scattered wits suddenly coalesced, painting a startlingly clear picture with broad strokes and blindingly bright colors.
What sort of life were you raised for?
This has nothing to do with me and my life.
Except it had everything to do with Lilith and the life she’d been raised for.
For all her independence and stubbornness, Lilith had been no freer to choose her fate than any other woman born into the complex hierarchy of English society. Her future had been carved out before her birth, the path well-trodden by generations of female relations until every turn was clearly marked out for her to follow.
Lilith had been reared and educated expressly to become the mistress to a wealthy, powerful gentleman, an aristocrat with deep pockets only too willing to shower her with jewels and gowns and perhaps even affection.
She had offered up her slender, nubile body in trade for a life of luxury and ease, for the allusion of freedom and a place on the fringes of good society.
And when it proved necessary, to save her father thirty thousand pounds at three percent.
“What sort of market if not the marriage market?” Lady Priscilla asked. “What sort of skills?”
“A market where a lady’s virginity, rather than her sterling reputation or familial connections, is the prize,” Lilith replied. “As for skills, it’s quite simple really. While your mother was teaching you how to embroider a neat stitch, fill awkward silences with inane conversation and pour tea without spilling a drop, Gwendolyn was teaching me to remove a man’s boots, fill his empty head with flattery and roll a cheroot one-handed while unbuttoning his—”
“That’s enough.” Jasper’s voice was surprisingly steady considering the rage beating at him, sinking sharp talons into his flesh and ripping his furiously beating heart right out of his chest.
With a soft, whisper-thin laugh, Lilith slowly turned her head, hair flying around her pale face and her eyes glowing like jewels. “Is it, enough, Lord Malleville? Do you surrender?”
It took Jasper a moment to comprehend her words, to remember their exchange on the balcony that first night.
I will be forced to call for reinforcement and lay siege to your impressive battlements until you surrender.
Do your worst.
For you, I think only my best will do.
“Christ, I’m an idiot.” Jasper rose unsteadily to his feet, his vision blurring and blood roaring through his veins. “It was nothing more than a pretense, from the moment you alighted from the carriage until your female relations discovered me in your bed.”
“In my defense, you did follow me after I begged you, and very prettily if I do say so myself, to return to the house.” Lilith swung her legs over the side of the chaise and rose to stand before him with her head tilted back and her eyes—those lying, deceitful eyes—pinning him in place. And by God, but her beauty stole his breath even now, when he knew she’d wielded it as a weapon against him from the very beginning.
“With your words perhaps,” he snapped. “Your lips, eyes and luscious body begged for something else entirely.”
“You can hardly blame me for wanting you,” she replied with a dainty shrug of one bare shoulder, not the least intimidated by his temper. “Or for claiming you when the opportunity arose. I was not taught to resist temptation, after all.”
“And that little show you put on bathing in the candlelight,” he continued, ignoring her words altogether, his fury gathering momentum like a boulder rolling downhill. “That bit was a lovely prelude to the encore performance.”
“Encore performance?” she repeated, one golden brow winging up over the damn fan, as if daring him to continue while his family and hers made no effort whatsoever to turn away from the spectacle.
“I like your masculine beauty,” he mimicked. “I like that you would ruin all you hold dear for me.”
“Risk, my lord.” Lilith waved the fan so fast unruly curls took flight, lifting to shimmer around her head, a fallen angel’s tarnished halo. “There is a vast difference between one night of risk and a lifetime of ruin.”
There was something in her words, something in the faint tremor of her hand and the untamed curls flying about that pricked at the edges of Jasper’s awareness. Before he could grasp at the lose thread to unravel the thought, Lilith closed the fan with a deft snap of her wrist, scattering his wits to the far corners once more. Leaving only anger to shore up his flagging strength.
“Another lesson learned by trial and error as a good lesson ought to be learned?” he taunted.
“It was actually.” Lilith advanced on him until she was so close he had no choice but to inhale her exotic scent, no choice but to see the emotion flaring in her eyes and the moisture beading along her temples.
“Was last night’s risk worth the ruin of your life?” Jasper growled. “Make no mistake, you will marry me and share in the ruin you’ve wrought.”
“I ought to have known you would prove stubborn to the bitter end,” she whispered for his ears alone. “Have you not yet realized my life was ruined long ago? Not by the single night I spent in Cheltenham’s bed, as His Grace was not up to the task at hand. Would you care guess who had the honor of relieving me of my negligible virtue, and at a bargain, all things considered?”
Jasper didn’t need to guess, the truth was glaringly, painfully obvious.
Lilith’s smile was soft and deceptively sweet, her voice merely a breath of sound when she delivered the death knell to his hopes and dreams. “Lord Morrissey was my choice, mine alone, made with a clear understanding of the consequences and not a single regret. Not then and certainly not now.”
“You warned me.” Jasper was undone by her admission, by her nearness, by his body’s instantaneous reaction and his heart’s stubborn refusal to grasp the irrefutable proof of her treachery. “Spelled it out, word by word, step by step. Entice me, entrap me, string me along and, for an encore, pauper me. And still I was so bloody blinded by your beauty I did not see the ugly truth.”
“Beauty is as beauty does.” Lilith lifted one long finger to trace the scar on his cheek, the mark of the curse he’d lived with for twelve years. “Do you surrender?”
TAMING BEAUTY
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It was not in Lilith Aberdeen’s nature to dither over a fork in the road or to travel down a path not of her choosing.
So it came as something of a surprise when she found herself standing at a crossroads in a desolate stretch of Dartmoor as the sun set on the worst day of her life.
She remembered precious little of the journey beyond the single glance back she’d allowed herself as the carriage turned off the long, dusty drive. That one quick glimpse had been little more than a blur of color and movement, but it was etched in her mind. Meg and Charlie and Henry scampering through the tall grass and wildflowers, waving frantically. Amelia, Susan and Matthew standing on the lawn with Breckenridge House rising behind them, gray stone shining in the glare of the sun. And beyond, the landscape spreading out in a patchwork of plowed fields, meadows and open moorland.
Of Jasper there’d been no sign. No words of farewell. Not even a parting shot fired from the battlements.
Lilith had a vague memory of their caravan stopping to change horses some three or four hours past, of whispered conversation outside the conveyance and Alabaster pushing a meat pasty into her hands with orders to eat every last bite.
Now the three bites she’d managed felt like so many jagged stones in her belly, tumbling around and threatening to come back up again.
“Won’t you travel with us to Price of Folly?” Kate followed along while Lilith paced back and forth between the two roads, neither of which she wanted to travel. “Robbie will be pleased to finally meet you and more than happy to have you to stay for a few days.”
“Mr. Price is a charming old flirt,” Harry said as she came up alongside Lilith. “You’ll adore him. And what’s more, he’ll adore you.”
“Don’t tell your grandmother,” Kate said. “But I think Robbie fell head over heels in love with her when we stopped off on the way to Cornwall.”
“Shh, no talk of Cornwall,” Sissy chided, falling into step on Lilith’s other side and giving her a strained smile. “We’ll take a page from Harry’s book and pretend that place and that man do not exist.”
“If you pretend long enough, eventually you will come to believe it,” Harry said with some authority.
“Say you’ll come with us,” Kate implored. “We’ll have all sorts of fun and you’ll be feeling right as rain in no time.”
“We’ll get you good and tipsy on hot toddies,” Harry added in a whisper.
“Oh, I know,” Sissy chirped. “I’ll brush out your hair and braid it for you. Annalise does that for me when my menses are upon me. It’s wonderfully soothing.”
“We’ll stay up late talking every night,” Kate said. “And laze about all morning in our nightgowns.”
“Yes, and we’ll take tea together on the lawn,” Sissy said, a desperate edge to her voice. “And share all our secrets.”
Only Lilith hadn’t any secrets left to share, not after this morning. She’d bared them all to save a wounded beast from his own foolish notions of honor.
And willfully and intentionally broken her heart in the process.
“Come along with us, Lil,” Harry murmured, taking hold of her hand.
Lilith tugged her fingers free as their meandering brought them back to the fork in the road. She studied the diverging paths, finding nothing extraordinary about either of them other than the fact they pointed in the wrong direction.
One lead to the village of Bartlesborough and the estate Captain Robert Price had purchased in order to provide his granddaughter with a home.
The other lead to London and the crumbling old house Dunaway had wagered time and again, only to finally lose it in the biggest gamble of all.
Neither was the path to happily-ever-after.
“Please come with us,” Kate said from behind Lilith.
“Say you will,” Sissy begged from her right.
To her left, Harry gave an impatient huff. “You shouldn’t be alone just now.”
Alabaster planted herself in front of Lilith, neatly boxing her into a corner, persistent females pestering her from all sides. Thrusting her hands o
n her hips, the still beautiful woman frowned at her granddaughter. “You’ll come to Price of Folly and let us coddle you, Lilith Eve Marie Aberdeen. And that’s the end of it.”
“Coddle?” Lilith repeated in confusion. “I’m hardly in need of coddling.”
“I don’t know as I’ve ever seen a woman more in need of coddling,” her grandmother argued.
A chorus of agreement met Alabaster’s ludicrous statement and Lilith spun in a slow circle, taking in the visages of Dunaway’s daughters, surprised to find them looking back at her with obvious worry.
Thinking she must be quite a sight, disheveled and likely perspiring, to cause such naked concern, Lilith lifted a hand to sweep a stray lock of hair from her brow. Her fingers shook and a queer warmth gathered behind her eyes.
Damn and blast, she was on the verge of tears for the second time in one day.
Perhaps even on the edge of hysteria.
It was simply not to be born.
Pushing through the gaggle of girls surrounding her, Lilith marched in the opposite direction, her boots kicking up dust with each step she took. She walked away from her grandmother, away from Dunaway’s foolish, compassionate daughters, away from the two roads leading nowhere she wanted to go.
If only she could walk away from the heartache as well.
Instead, the heartache was joined by a rage so merciless and primitive, she could feel the heat of it licking at her limbs until she shook with it. Her blood was a river of fire in her veins, her heart a bellows feeding the flames, each breath a raw, searing blast of air scorching her throat.
Lilith wanted someone to blame for the fury consuming her, someone to hold accountable, someone to castigate, to pummel with words and fists.
She had only herself.
To blame and punish.
Only herself to rely upon to soothe her anger, to nurse her sorrow, to see to her happiness.
Always and forever, she had only herself.
Stopping beneath a gnarled old tree, Lilith stared down the long, empty road to Cornwall. By slow degrees, she wrestled her seething emotions under control, gulping the blessedly cool evening air until the burning in her lungs subsided and her racing heart slowed to a steady gallop. Finally, her palsied limbs settled to a mere tremble.
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