Besides, Hilary found herself curious about precisely what “some o’ that” might entail.
In an airy voice of studied unconcern, she said, “How can you tell? He is covered in bruises. Do you think him handsome?”
“Aye, as handsome as he can stare. But that arse, miss, begging your pardon. Seldom seen a finer pair o’ buttocks on a gentleman.” Trixie cupped her hands as if to squeeze the body parts in question. “What I wouldn’t give for a feel o’ them beauties.”
The open look of relish on Trixie’s pretty features caused Hilary to submerge herself again.
Gracious! She’d noticed almost everything else about Lord Davenport, but his buttocks had been covered by the tails of his evening coat.
Which made her wonder how Trixie knew what they looked like.…
No, she would not think about Lord Davenport and his spectacular hindquarters.
“I wish you would not talk in such a vulgar fashion,” she said belatedly, and quite unreasonably, since she’d encouraged the maid to expand on the subject.
Living at the academy all her adult life with only brief sojourns home, Hilary was woefully ignorant of what went on between men and women.
She knew the sorts of advances she was not supposed to encourage. But she wasn’t terribly certain of what it was she was guarding so vigilantly against.
Oh, she knew the theory and she’d caught glimpses of her brothers’ raucous goings-on here and there. But theory and glimpses didn’t begin to explain anything. And how would she know if she didn’t find out from Trixie? Hilary could hardly ask her brothers, and Miss Tollington would have been no help, even if she had been inclined to discuss such matters.
Trixie seemed to enjoy the act of procreation; that much was clear.
Would Hilary enjoy it? Would she long to squeeze her quiet, gentle husband’s buttocks? It seemed unlikely, but one never knew. The particulars of the marriage bed were a mystery she suspected she wouldn’t solve until the moment was upon her, so to speak.
Her experience of men thus far ought to have put her off the male of the species for life. And yet there was something compelling about the idea of having one of them for her very own. Surely there were nice gentlemen in the world. Men of taste and refinement and morals.
All of her dreams flooded her senses, luring her to follow them, no matter what the cost. How paltry of her to be so cast down at this one small setback. Mrs. Farrington might have seen the worst of her, but here was Davenport offering to take her to London.
He was neither so irresistible nor so persistent that she couldn’t hold him off for the duration of a day. They would not even be obliged to stay overnight somewhere if they left at dawn. They could take the old coach. Her brothers wouldn’t have any need of it.
That way, no one would see her traveling in Davenport’s company. And if it would be scandalous to go on her own with Davenport in a closed carriage, she could take Trixie with her, couldn’t she?
She sat up so quickly, water slopped over the sides of the tub. “Help me, Trix. I need to get dressed.”
* * *
“I mean to say, dear fellow, it isn’t done,” said Davenport confidentially to Tom deVere. “Even I know that. Must cherish one’s womenfolk, you know.”
He’d cleaned himself up as best he could with the assistance of a pert little maid named Trixie and returned to the scene of debauchery that had so shocked Honey and her companion.
Davenport regretted the devilish impulse that had made him confront Honey with the whores at his side. This was what got him into trouble more often than not—devilish impulse. She was a gently bred lady, despite her tendency to hit people.
He was now endeavoring to explain that fact to her brothers.
“If m’sister don’t like it, she can go back to that school she came from,” slurred Tom, giving his companion’s fleshy breast a hearty squeeze.
She shrieked, whether with pain or laughter Davenport couldn’t quite tell.
“She can’t go back; she’s been ’smissed,” said Benedict, the younger of the two. “We’re stuck with her. But we won’t be changing our ways for any naggy dab of a female. She’ll mind us or she can hire herself out as a guv’ness for all I care.”
“She is a lady,” said Davenport. “She is your sister. She deserves respect and consideration.”
“She’s a prune-faced little bitch,” said Benedict.
That did it. Despite Benedict’s bulk, he came easily out of his chair when Davenport bunched his fist in the fellow’s grubby shirt and hauled him up.
Nose to nose, Davenport spoke clearly. “Pay the girls off. Get rid of them. Now.”
“Who’s going to make me? You?” Benedict wheezed a laugh. The strength of his wine-soaked breath could have knocked a man down.
Davenport answered that question with his fist. He smashed it into Benedict’s face and watched him sprawl back against the armchair with blood streaming from his nose. Then he turned to shoot a glaring challenge at Tom.
Tom swung the tart off his lap and bore in. Davenport sidestepped, turned, and booted Tom’s backside, sending him sprawling.
He looked at the women. “You’ve been paid?”
Wide-eyed, they nodded.
“Then you can go,” he said, and turned to face both brothers.
That there were two of them evened the odds a little. He could easily dispatch one drunken bully, but two made the challenge more interesting.
Davenport’s body screamed in pain when a ham fist collided with the region of his kidney, but he didn’t suffer too many blows before he’d knocked both men down.
This time, they stayed down.
He was considering what to do with them when Honey burst in.
“What on earth is going on here?” she demanded, looking wildly from her brothers to Davenport. “What did you do to them?”
He inspected his knuckles. “Oh, just a friendly bout. Must keep my hand in, you know.”
“You floored both of them?” she squeaked, betraying a most unladylike knowledge of boxing cant. She ran to bend over Tom, patting his stubbled cheeks.
Her hair was still wet from her bath—and hadn’t he enjoyed a few fantasies about that activity? The golden tresses were darkened with damp, tied back in a thick braid. Unfortunate, that. He wanted to unbind it, run his hands through it, cloud it around that piquant little face.
She was calling her brothers’ names, to no avail. The combination of liquor and a Westruther right had done for them.
“Throw a bucket of water over them,” recommended Davenport. “That’ll wake them up. Though I daresay they wouldn’t thank you for it.”
She straightened, surveying him coldly. “You cause trouble wherever you go. I asked you to leave before. Why are you still here?”
“I thought you might need me,” he explained.
She gave an incredulous laugh. “The last thing I need is for you to brawl with my brothers.”
“That was not planned,” he admitted.
“Then why did it happen?”
“I told the lovely impures to leave. Your brothers took exception.” He thought it best not to mention the insult to Honey. No good could come of that.
She sighed and shook her head. “There’ll be more where they came from. And now that you’ve goaded my brothers, they’ll behave even worse tomorrow.”
She was probably right about that, but he didn’t regret punching Tom and Benedict deVere. The two of them needed a lesson.
“Honey,” he declared, “you cannot stay here.”
She stared up at him. “No,” she said. “That is just what I was thinking myself.”
Again, she surprised him. A speculative expression gathered in those lovely eyes of hers. “You offered to take me to London.”
Was it going to be this easy? He suppressed a wolfish grin. “Of course. It’s the least I can do.”
“Yes,” she said crisply. “It is.”
“Well, that settles it. We’ll be off,
shall we? I daresay there’s a carriage in your stables we can borrow.”
“We cannot go now,” she said, glancing at the clock. “If we leave at first light, we can reach London before evening. That way, we shall not be obliged to put up at an inn overnight, which would be most improper.”
Not so much of a greenhorn as he’d like. Well, it wasn’t as if he’d never managed to be amorous in a carriage before. “All right. But you’ll have to protect me from your brothers until morning.”
Honey eyed them with a raised eyebrow. “I should have said you were capable of taking care of yourself.” She squared her shoulders. “There are conditions.”
“But of course.” He tilted his head, trying to appear interested.
“First, you must stop calling me Honey.”
“I’ll try. But the thing is, you see, that it keeps popping out of my mouth. Look at you. You’re all gold and cream, and that color of your eyes … I’ve never seen that color before. You make me think of honey. And then before I know it, out it pops again.”
She made a frustrated kitten sound, a cross between a “harrumph,” a choke, and a spurt of unwilling laughter.
He smiled at her.
She scowled back. “I am Miss deVere to you. I will not entertain any other appellation. Next. You will not brawl while in my company. I do not wish to draw attention to our journey. We must try to remain inconspicuous.”
Honey eyed him doubtfully. “Do you think you can manage that?”
He bowed. “I’ll do my poor best.”
She pointed a finger at him. “Do you promise you will not punch anyone?”
Briefly he thought of his shadow. But if the man hadn’t harmed him in the past few months, he wasn’t likely to do so now.
He held up one of the weapons in question in a gesture of taking an oath. “I promise.”
She nodded. “Third, and most importantly, is our destination. I have been thinking, and it seems to me that you and I have a mutual connection.”
Manfully he denied himself the opportunity to turn that statement into sly innuendo. “Indeed?”
“Yes, your cousin Lady Rosamund Westruther married my cousin Griffin deVere, Lord Tregarth. I have never met Lord Tregarth, but you could introduce us.”
His own plan had been vague about their destination. He’d just wanted to get her away from this place and keep her with him for as long as possible.
Rosamund … Yes, by Jove. It might very well be the answer.
“That is a very good plan,” he said. “Exactly what I was thinking myself.”
“Lady Tregarth might put me in the way of a family to whom I can be of service,” said Honey with a brave squaring of her shoulders. “I daresay with the season coming up, many young ladies require a final polish to set them on the right path.”
A governess? What a terrible waste that would be. But he didn’t argue. He simply nodded.
“Excellent.” He rubbed his hands together. “Any other conditions? If there are, I shall be obliged to write them down. Can’t keep more than a couple of things in my head at once, you know.”
She took a step toward him. “Yes, there is another condition. You must not kiss me again, or try any … funny business.”
“Funny business. Hmm.” He contemplated her for a moment. “No, I’m afraid I can’t promise that.”
Her eyes snapped wide. “What?” The word came out as a squawk of outrage.
He spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “When I give my word, I don’t break it. And I fear that you, my dear Honey, are too much temptation for a man like me to resist.”
She tried to appear outraged and haughty but only managed to look sweetly discombobulated. “But—but—” she sputtered. “You would force yourself on me, even though I have asked you not to?”
“Ah, come now,” he said easily. “Who said anything about force?”
* * *
The man was a devil in rake’s clothing. Now he’d put her in an intolerable position. If she went with him, it would be tantamount to asking for his improper advances.
She couldn’t afford to refuse him and he knew it. The dastard.
London.
Even if she could not take part in the season or obtain those coveted Almack’s vouchers, being in London might be enough. Perhaps her cousin Griffin might take pity on her and intercede with her guardian on her behalf.
Oliver, Lord deVere, had routinely ignored her pleas for an advance on her inheritance to fund her come-out. Her persistence had finally been rewarded by a threat to marry her off to a toothless octogenarian marquis, so she’d given up.
But Lord deVere would have to listen to Griffin, wouldn’t he?
The price was to suffer the rakish advances of Lord Davenport for the space of a day.
“I have hat pins,” she warned him. “And I’m not afraid to use them.”
He winced. “There will be no need for hat pins, Honey, I assure you.”
“Miss deVere to you.”
“When we are in public,” he agreed, “I shall call you Miss deVere.”
She supposed she had to be satisfied with that.
He pursed his lips. “What shall we do about your brothers?”
Her resolve hardened. “We won’t tell them. They’ll still be sleeping off their excesses when we slip away tomorrow morning. We’ll send the carriage back with a message that I’m staying with Lady Tregarth.”
“So that’s settled then,” he said, matching her decisive tone.
His face was grave, but a wicked twinkle lurked in those dark eyes as he came toward her. “Shall we shake hands on the bargain?”
Feeling absurdly daring, she stuck out her hand. He took it in his, and time shuddered to a halt.
So much heat in his palm, so much strength in the clasp of his fingers. His hand was so large that it all but swallowed hers. The effect was electrifying; she felt it all the way down her spine.
She started, pulled away.
“I—I’d better see to dinner.” Her tone was all fluttery and breathless. Ugh. She could have kicked herself for sounding like such a dunce.
He gave her a smile so full of amused understanding that she regretted her former vow to remain civil to him.
With a scowl, she hurried away to the kitchens.
CHAPTER FIVE
By virtue of judicious dousing with cold water, Davenport sobered up the brothers deVere enough to sit down to dine with their sister and guest.
Honey had been astonished at Tom and Benedict’s easy acceptance of Davenport after he’d trounced them. For his part, Davenport soon saw that her brothers weren’t quite as bad as their earlier behavior might have suggested. Once they were a few degrees more sober, they admitted the impropriety of their behavior.
It was clear, however, that they did not intend to change their ways for their sister and would find any means they could to be rid of her.
That finally decided Davenport, had he needed persuasion in the matter, to abide by Honey’s wishes and keep their departure on the morrow secret.
By the time Honey had retired to bed, the deVere brothers were well on their way to oblivion once more. They wouldn’t wake before noon, he’d wager. By then, he and Honey would be long gone.
The surly manservant had shown Davenport to his room with bad grace, informing him that if he wanted something in the night not to bother calling, for there was no one but the mistress to hear him in this wing. With a belligerent stare at the broken bellpull as if daring it to resurrect itself, Hodgins stomped out, slamming the door behind him.
Davenport looked around. If the bedchamber they’d chosen for him was the best they had, he shuddered to think of the state the rest of the house must be in.
Plaster had cracked and fallen away in some places; curtains and hangings that once might have been green were moth-eaten and faded to the color of sludge. Dust lay thick on every surface, gathering in the grooves of the intricate, heavy carving on the bedposts. The canopy above his head bo
re so many holes it resembled a cobweb.
He lay on the most uncomfortable mattress he’d ever had the displeasure to encounter—and that was saying something for a man who’d been dumped in a barn the night before.
It didn’t help that he couldn’t stop thinking about Honey and the one promise he’d refused to make. He didn’t believe in cloaking his wicked intentions in virtue. She had to know he’d do everything he could to seduce her on the way to Town.
She’d informed him loftily that her maid would travel with her, for propriety’s sake. If the maid in question was the redoubtable Trixie, he foresaw few problems there.
His body pulsed in anticipation. Honey, with her toplofty manner and her tightly wound virtue. She was a challenge, and the uncertainty of success merely added spice to the chase.
Fantasies of a rocking carriage and a pliant Honey danced through his head.
He smiled into the darkness. Who needed sleep?
There was a loud, splitting crack.
Then the world fell in on top of him.
* * *
Hilary couldn’t sleep. She’d tried warm milk, counting sheep, reciting the litany of social rules she’d instructed her students to repeat by rote.
Drat the man! Nothing worked when she could see his smiling face, those sensual lips telling her he would most definitely not promise to keep his hands off her person on the way to London.
She recalled, all too vividly, the feel of those lips on hers, the warmth and hardness of him as his arm encircled her frozen body on that horse.
What would it have been like to be married to such a man?
Hilary shuddered to think of it. She’d wager he was a constant subject of gossip among the ton. With that cheerfully roving eye, he’d cut a swath through the ladies of London, whether he was a married man or no.
She didn’t regret that their betrothal had come to nothing. Indeed, the whole notion seemed to have been a figment of her mother’s imagination. That could well be the case. Marigold deVere had always harbored illusions of grandeur.
London's Last True Scoundrel Page 5
