“Good Lord, Lilith, you look as if you’ve taken a tumble down a hill,” the bonneted beauty said by way of greeting.
“What on earth are you doing here, Harry?” Lilith demanded, coming to a halt and thrusting her hands to her hips.
“Alabaster could hardly make the journey alone,” the improbably named lady replied airily. “And when Kate caught me shimmying down the tree outside my window, there was nothing for it but to bring her along.”
“You snuck out of school?” Lilith aimed the question at the younger girl. “Good gracious, Mr. Price will be worried sick when he realizes you’ve gone missing.”
“We stopped off at Price of Folly on the way,” Kate replied. “Robbie understood perfectly the reason for our escape from Miss Beaumont’s hallowed halls.”
“Well, I am certainly glad someone does,” Lilith replied. “For I cannot say I understand it at all.”
“It’s quite simple, really,” Kate said. “Your grandmother felt unequal to the task you set for her, so she’s pawned it off on us.”
“Hmm, pawn as in a chess piece one is willing to sacrifice for the greater good?” Harry mused. “Or pawn as in to pledge as collateral on a loan?”
“Honestly, Harry, this is no time for your convoluted word games,” the younger lady drawled with a low, husky laugh. “Either way, I imagine Lilith is the pawn in Dunaway’s latest scheme.”
“Have you been pledged to this farmer in order to satisfy that man’s debts?” Harry raked her gaze over Jasper, her nose wrinkling and her lips pursing.
“It is Sissy who is pledged to marry Baron Malleville,” Lilith replied with a sigh Jasper wanted to believe held regret. “I am merely Dunaway’s sacrificial pawn.”
“Sacrificial pawn?” Jasper repeated, his gaze skipping from one lady to another in an attempt to keep up with their quixotic conversation.
“Oh for God’s sake, Lilith.” Harry clasped Lilith’s hand and removed her from his side, her shadow disengaging from his and leaving Jasper feeling an odd pang of loss. “When will you cease allowing that man to embroil you in his peccadilloes?”
“I didn’t recognize the trap until it was too late,” Lilith admitted, falling into step between the two ladies and allowing herself to be towed toward the house.
“What trap?” Jasper asked, taking up the rear position behind the trio.
“It is always a trap when that man comes calling,” Harry said.
Lilith pulled her hand from Harry’s, leaving the three ladies walking side by side but not touching.
“I’m afraid Harry is right,” Kate said. “It is best not to answer the door when the Earl of Dunaway comes knocking.”
“You haven’t compromised your principals, have you?” Harry shot a sharp glance back over her shoulder at Jasper, her green eyes fierce.
And all too familiar.
“Or anything else?” Kate added.
“Not yet, but I’ll admit to a near miss.”
“How near?”
“Near enough.”
“Then it’s a good thing we arrived when we did.”
“A splendid thing,” Lilith agreed.
“He didn’t attempt to force himself upon you, did he?” Harry asked.
“Of course not,” Lilith answered. “Baron Malleville is as honorable as the day is long. And Cornish days are longer than most.”
“Well, come along,” Harry ordered. “Auntie Alabaster is inside and the sooner we put our heads together and come up with a plan, the sooner we can be gone from this desolate patch of moorland.”
“It rather reminds me of home,” Kate said. “Did you see all the sheep grazing in the pasture?”
“You and your sheep,” Harry huffed out. “You likely named each and every one of them as we rode past.”
Lady Priscilla turned and trailed after the ladies as they passed Dunaway and continued into the house, Dervish welcoming them as if he’d never before seen a quartet of beautiful women cross the threshold.
“They are quite spectacular when seen together, are they not?” the earl asked, his gaze sharp.
His green-as-new-grass gaze, situated in a face comprised of exquisitely angled cheekbones, a straight, narrow nose, a wide mouth and a square jaw, all topped by blond curls—the masculine mold from which four beautiful women had been created.
“Yours, I take it?” Jasper asked, never mind the answer was written on the earl’s features, quite literally.
“I do proudly claim them as my own, though Harry refuses to return the favor.”
“You are an arrogant ass.”
Dunaway shrugged away the words with a smile. “One day soon, when Annalise and Madeleine are out from beneath their mother’s eagle eye, I shall gather them all together and have a family portrait painted.”
“What of the heir your wife is purportedly carrying?”
“Another daughter, no doubt.”
“You don’t seem unduly bothered by the possibility of not acquiring a son to inherit the title.”
“I’ll be quite dead so why should I be bothered by the probability my estate and title will fall into abeyance?
“And what will be your daughters’ fates should you die tomorrow?” Jasper demanded. “Have you no care for their futures?”
“My countess will see to it our daughters marry well,” Dunaway replied easily. “Kate is an heiress and as such will have her pick of the gentlemen when the time comes. And Harry…well, if ever there was a woman born to carve out her own destiny, Harry is that woman.”
“And Miss Aberdeen?” Jasper itched to wipe the supercilious grin off Dunaway’s face with his fists.
“The fair Lilith is something of a conundrum, is she not? I might suggest you settle a sum and a house on her. Except you haven’t the funds to keep her in the luxury to which she is accustomed, and while I did once dally with cousins, to disastrous effect, even I know diddling one’s wife’s sister is beyond the pale.” Dunaway turned and ambled toward the house as if he hadn’t all but suggested Jasper make Lilith his mistress. “So I suppose if you want Lil, you’ll have to marry her.”
“Marry Lilith?” Jasper repeated, his heart thundering and his mind racing with possibilities.
Dunaway skipped up the steps to the front porch and turned around. “Of course, first you’ll have to sever your betrothal to Sissy, thereby foregoing the thirty thousand pounds at three percent that come with her.”
Christ, he should have known Dunaway was simply toying with him. The earl would no more offer up Lilith on fair terms than he would turn away from an innocent woman, a disastrous investment or a losing hand of cards.
“Not to say Lilith would come to you entirely empty-handed.” Dunaway smiled like a cat swimming in a tub of fresh cream. “Hmm, I suppose I could see my way to dowering her with that drafty, decrepit old house on the Thames. Charmed Crosshairs, the locals call it, on account of the elderly gentlemen battling over the garden walls from both sides.”
Jasper’s hands clenched into fists as he fought his own battle to hold onto his temper at the man’s taunting. He held the mortgage to the property and by all accounts the house was falling to ruins and the swampland it sat on was slowly being swallowed by the river.
“Is my offer not to your liking, then?” Dunaway asked. “Ah, well, I can’t say as I blame you. Lilith is a contrary creature, fiercely independent and far too stubborn and selfish to make any sane man a good wife. Still, you can’t blame a father for trying to see his daughter well married.”
Jasper stomped past the smiling, sorry excuse for a father standing on the portico lest he give in to the urge to murder the man.
The sisters were gathered at the foot of the stairs, embroiled in animated, if hushed, conversation with a diminutive woman dressed in scarlet silk and dripping in diamonds and rubies.
The infamous Alabaster Sinclair waved one gloved hand through the air, silencing the ladies as she turned to watch Jasper’s approach.
Good Lord, the courtesan h
ad to be past her sixtieth year, yet she retained the beauty which had reportedly started a decades’ long rift between two dukes and caused more than one young buck to lose his life dueling over her negligible honor.
Pale, silver curls tumbled artfully from an intricate coil of braids and loops atop her head, drifting down to frame delicate features dominated by large sapphire eyes and plump, rouged lips currently lifted into a smile promising all sorts of wicked, carnal pleasures.
Jasper looked from the lady to her granddaughter, unsettled to find the same smile gracing Lilith’s lips as she leaned upon the newel post in an elegant, indolent pose.
As she straightened from her graceful slouch, it occurred to Jasper she’d spoken true that night on the balcony. She did possess her own brand of prudence and along with it more honor and integrity than most men could lay claim to.
She might well be a virgin still, but she was no innocent girl untutored in the ways of men. She’d recognized the hunger in him from the very beginning. How easily she might have set her hooks into him, slowly and carefully reeling him in only to net him with his own desire.
Instead, she’d warned him time and again, finally spelling it all out, word by word.
Entice him, entrap him, string him along and, for an encore, pauper him.
As Jasper stormed past the ladies into his study, slamming the door behind him with enough force to send a shower of rubble falling from the stone hearth, he felt the sharp sting of regret.
He ought to have taken the sacrificial pawn Dunaway had offered up, claimed Lilith on the moors and sealed both their fates, familial duty and financial considerations be damned.
Jasper made his way to the sideboard and the full decanter of whiskey sitting upon the scarred wood. He lifted the bottle and poured the liquor down his throat, welcoming the burn, hoping it would be accompanied by oblivion.
Four hours later, the sun was setting over the cliffs but oblivion had not yet put in an appearance.
Instead Jasper was merely muddle-headed and angry. A combination even he, in his decidedly inebriated state, recognized as dangerous.
TAMING BEAUTY
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“The Beast of Breckenridge appears to be a dangerous man,” Harry whispered, shivering dramatically. “You really ought to let the wedding go forth as planned. It would serve that man right knowing his daughter must lay down for such a brute as payment for his sins.”
It occurred to Lilith she ought to have shared her change of heart in regards to thwarting Malleville’s plans. Only there’d been no time, what with overseeing the juggling of bedchambers required to see Alabaster, Harry and Kate comfortably settled, attending a twilight musicale with Meg and the other children, and dressing for dinner.
“Yes, well, about the wedding,” Lilith began, only to lose her train of thought entirely when she looked across the room to find Jasper watching her from the position he’d taken up by the cold hearth. He did look quite dangerous, and had since he’d entered the parlor after missing dinner entirely.
“I know you wrote the wedding must be stopped, but are you quite certain there is no way to allow it to go forth and still ruin that man financially?” Harry asked.
“That man has a name.”
“Not to me, he doesn’t.”
“And Dunaway will only be ruined if Sissy cries off, which she will not do. So you can give up on whatever plan you are hatching in that pretty head of yours.”
“What makes you think I am hatching a plan?”
“When are you not hatching plans and devising schemes?” Alabaster asked, waving Harry over and seating herself between the two younger ladies. “Most of them designed to ruin Dunaway in one way or another.”
“One day I’ll do more than devise a scheme,” Harry replied. “I’ll lay waste to everything that man holds dear.”
“Seeing as Dunaway holds very little dear, you might be waiting a long time,” Lilith said, watching Jasper step away from the hearth.
He prowled around the perimeter of the room, avoiding the nearly two dozen guests crowding the parlor, a goodly number of them young men who’d been only too happy to be entertained by Alabaster’s relatively tame tales during dinner.
“What else do I have to occupy my time?” Harry asked.
“You ought to be occupying your time learning all you can from Miss Beaumont so you might marry well,” Alabaster suggested.
“Marry well?” Harry repeated, her voice dripping scorn.
“I see no reason whatsoever why you shouldn’t, Harry dear. After all, you are a duke’s granddaughter, if you would but acknowledge the connection.”
Lilith paid little mind to the conversation, her attention focused almost entirely upon Jasper. The fluid grace of his movements. The way the light from the chandelier picked out fiery threads in his too-long tresses. The heated looks he shot her from various points in the room. The frown pulling at his mouth, thrusting the plump lower lip out in the masculine pout that drove her to distraction.
She’d kissed that mouth and wanted nothing more than to do it again. To lick that lower lip, pull it into her mouth and bite down just hard enough to draw a deep, dark growl from his broad chest.
Dangerous.
“A duke’s granddaughter who was born and raised in a dirty little hovel on a tenant farm in Shropshire.” Harry’s brittle voice penetrated Lilith’s thoughts only marginally as Jasper paced before the wall of French doors open to the cool night breeze.
“As much as it pains me to defend Dunaway, you can hardly lay the blame for that at his feet,” Alabaster replied.
“I do blame that man,” Harry hissed. “And I shall always blame him.”
“It was your mother, God rest her soul, who chose to marry Mr. O’Connell rather than face the consequences of her actions,” Alabaster replied. “Bathsheba and Monty found you and brought you back to civilization before any lasting damage was done. So for all intents and purposes you were raised in a duke’s household.”
“A duke’s mistress’s household,” Harry argued.
“Monty spent far more time in my sister’s London town house than he did in that great mausoleum in Scotland with his shrew of a duchess.”
“And so shall I, spend my time in London, that is. I’ve no intention of marrying and giving over my freedom to a man only to have him drag me off to the country. I would rather die a thousand deaths than spend even one day in the country.”
“And yet, here you are in the country.” Alabaster took hold of Lilith’s hand, drawing her attention away from the dangerous man pacing like a beast too long caged. Her grandmother clasped Harry’s fingers in her free hand and gave both ladies a little squeeze. “Offering assistance to your sister, just as you ought.”
“Sissy is no more Harry’s sister than she is mine,” Lilith argued purely out of habit.
“It is true,” Harry agreed. “I should rather not claim as my sister a grown woman who would not only allow her entire future to be shaped by her father’s inability to keep his trousers buttoned, but would then sit in a corner and pout about it.”
“While I will admit Sissy is a silly chit prone to excess emotion, she hasn’t any choice in the matter of who she marries,” Lilith protested.
“Don’t be naïve, darling,” Alabaster replied. “We all have choices. It is simply a matter of whether one is fearless enough to risk regret in order to make them.”
Just then Jasper moved across the parlor with purpose, aiming for the knot of young bucks clustered around the frayed settee and the two pretty young girls perched upon it.
Sissy and Kate both looked up at his approach, golden curls bobbing over the heads of the gentlemen sprawled on stools and chairs, and in one instance right on the floor at their feet.
Odd, but Sissy did not appear to be pouting. Rather, the girl looked radiant, all rosy, dimpled cheeks and flashing blue eyes.
Baron Malleville leaned over the back of the settee to whisper in Sissy’s ear and whatever wor
ds he spoke had her smiling and nodding her head.
Lilith jumped to her feet, her heart racing and an odd ringing filling in her ears. A sharp pain jabbed her somewhere in the vicinity of her heart and heat raced along her limbs.
Damn and blast, she was jealous of Dunaway’s spoiled, petulant daughter.
In six days Jasper would marry Sissy. In six days he would be free to whisper sweet nothings in the girl’s ear from sunup to sundown. To touch her and kiss her and make love to her all the hours between.
Too late, Lilith recognized the regret washing over her, and along with it a hollow loneliness unlike any she’d experienced in all the years she’d lived in isolation.
First in Gwendolyn’s house of debauchery, where she was mostly ignored by her temperamental mother and the over-worked and underappreciated servants.
Later at Miss Beaumont’s Academy, where for all she’d been thought glamourous and popular, she’d formed only the most superficial of friendships, easily discarded when her future diverged from that of the other girls.
And finally, within the circle of similarly situated ladies and gentlemen who made up her set of acquaintances in Town. Together they orbited the periphery of good society, bound together by the circumstances of their birth, by misfortune or folly, rather than any sort of familial or intimate connection.
She ought to have seduced Jasper out on the moors, enticed him, entrapped him, strung him along and, for an encore, married the great hulking beast.
“I believe I’ll retire,” Lilith murmured, unsettled by her own foolish, selfish notions.
“Go on then, darling,” Alabaster encouraged, giving Lilith’s hand a final squeeze before releasing her fingers. “You leave all the planning and scheming to Harry and me. It is what we do best, after all.”
Lilith considered retaking her seat long enough to explain to her grandmother and Harry that there was no longer any need for plans or schemes. Only she wasn’t altogether certain she could form the words necessary, what with her emotions in a queer tangle.
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