To Charm a Naughty Countess

by Theresa Romain

  “Thank you, Hambleton. If I’m not careful, I shall end by becoming quite intoxicated, and that would never do.”

  “Oh, wouldn’t it?” He leered, just as she’d known he would, and she smiled dutifully in return.

  Surely it should not be so much work being ornamental. Or maybe she just hadn’t the spirit for it tonight.

  Fortunately, Emily banged back into the drawing room then, humming a little under her breath. She looked smug, which usually meant she had dispensed advice with a heavy hand.

  And behind her… Michael. Marching swiftly as a soldier, his expression set and stubborn.

  Caroline suddenly felt apprehensive, and she sat up a little straighter in her tapestry-covered chair. Hambleton stood at her side. They both stared as Michael strode over to loom before Caroline.

  “You are mistaken in your assumptions,” he said without preamble.

  She could not fathom what he was talking about—or what could have made Emily look so pleased with herself, and Michael so displeased. “I beg your pardon, Wyverne.” A phrase he knew well.

  His nostrils flared. He looked a little wild, like that German composer. Beethoven, was it? The same tousled hair, raked by an agitated hand; the same strong blade of a nose. From his neck down, though, he was utterly English in his ducal uniform of snowy linens, dark coat, and a green brocade waistcoat the precise color of his eyes.

  Which were, right now, narrowed at her. He seemed not even to note Hambleton standing at her side or Everett seated only a few feet away. “You, and the rest of society, have been under the misapprehension that I abandoned you eleven years ago. I assure you, I regret that you were nearly ruined.”

  The room went quiet at once.

  “I beg your pardon,” Caroline said again. Her voice sounded wrong, shaped by numb lips.

  “Though my departure was swift, it had nothing to do with you,” he continued, his hands folded behind his back. “In truth, I was eager to leave London for reasons of my own. When my father died shortly thereafter, I was unable to return. I had no notion that my own family affairs would affect your social standing.”

  Oh, God. This. This, after all these years. This, in the presence of a dozen and a half members of polite society. Thirty-six ears that collected gossip just as honeybees collected pollen. Like honey, the best gossip never lost its flavor.

  Her eyes flicked to Emily, who looked as stunned as though feral pigs had just run into the drawing room. So this wasn’t part of Emily’s Secret Plan. A small blessing.

  Caroline emitted a bell of a laugh. No matter if it rang a little false. “We need not discuss something that happened so long ago. Surely it’s of little consequence now.”

  The taut silence of the room snapped into whispers. Caroline’s skin disobeyed her careful discipline, though she did not know if her face had gone bone white or berry red. She tried desperately to send Michael a message with her eyes.

  Stop. Talking. Now.

  Naturally, he misinterpreted. “But I can see that you are upset. Caroline, I cannot allow you to hold me in disfavor after all this time.”

  “I do not, I promise.” There, that sounded a little better. Some of the numb-slapped feeling was ebbing, and sensation was returning to her lips. “We are all in your drawing room, are we not? Everyone who is here must count you as a friend.”

  He looked at her a little oddly, not picking up on the reminder that others were scattered all around them.

  He pressed a thumb against his temples, shutting his eyes. She tried again. “Wyverne, you look a trifle ill. Shall we check the stillroom for something to help your head?”

  Not her most subtle segue, but when he opened his eyes again, something seemed to have cleared. “Very well,” he accepted with a curt nod.

  Caroline excused herself, her head high as she crossed the wide drawing room. The old memories clawed at her exposed back as she trod the patterned carpet, aware of Michael’s presence behind her, aware of the eyes on her and the whispers that roiled.

  Just as they had eleven years ago. Damn the man. She had tried to warn him. No doubt Emily had tried too. But there was never any warning Michael, nor any warning for him. He was as purposeful and blunt as a club.

  And a club could easily destroy the subtler weapons Caroline had honed. Charm and graciousness were too fine and fragile to stand up to such a beating.

  As soon as they entered the corridor outside the drawing room, she reached past him to press the door shut, then rounded on him. “You dratted duke,” she hissed. “You have humiliated me in front of others.”

  His head jerked. “I—”

  “If you say ‘I beg your pardon,’ I will not be responsible for my actions.”

  “Already I do not comprehend your actions. You appear to be angry when I meant only to offer you an apology.”

  She yanked at his sleeve, pulling him further away from the drawing room door, then hissed, “An apology? Is that what it was? I couldn’t tell, as I never heard the words ‘I’m sorry’ come out of your mouth. Instead, there was a lot of tosh about you abandoning me and my complete insignificance to you, which, considering the ancient vintage of those events, surely did not need to be brought up with such urgency in front of all your guests.”

  Her voice was rising again, and she shoved open the nearest door and pressed Michael’s surprised body through the doorway. She followed him and kicked the door closed behind her.

  One of the inevitable Carcel lamps sat on the mantel, revealing the dim shapes of the room: chaise longue, flat-cushioned chair, a wallpaper that loomed dark in the low light. They were in the dizzy-patterned Chinese room. It seemed an age, rather than the span of a single day, since Caroline had lounged in here with Emily, talking of Michael as though she had all the time in the world to make something of him, or of herself.

  Instead, he had unmade her in a few swift instants—just as he had so long ago, with a kiss that changed her life.

  “You don’t even know what you’ve done.” She stumbled over to the chaise and sank onto it, heavy and dull.

  “Maybe it wasn’t the most articulate apology, but an apology is what I intended.”

  Michael threaded his way through the clutter of furniture with aggravating certainty and seated himself on the fragile chair Caroline had occupied that morning. It creaked a protest as he settled onto it, leaning toward her. “Your friend Lady Tallant let me know that you had suffered greatly during your debut season, eventually undergoing what was practically a forced marriage. As the author, if unknowingly, of your distress, I sought to make amends.”

  Caroline sank into a recline and covered her face with her hands. “This is too ridiculous,” she said through her fingers, then allowed her hands to drop. “I’m sure you meant well, and Emily did too. But I am also sure that Emily did not intend for you to profess your desire to undo an ancient humiliation.”

  “I—”

  “Don’t. Say. It.”

  He let out a surprised cough. “I was about to say, ‘I cannot be sure of her intention, because she herself was unsure of your feelings.’ That is all.”

  “I don’t think either you or Emily wants to know my feelings right now.” She pushed herself up to a seated position. “I don’t even know if I can express them in words, since I’ve never collected the vocabulary of profanity that most gentlemen enjoy.” She sighed into the silence. “But you wouldn’t know what to do with feelings anyway, would you? So let me respond to your ridiculous theories.”

  “I—”

  “I will kill you if you say it. I swear it.”

  Michael’s brows knit. “You are in some distress.”

  “Very astute, Your Grace.”

  She could see his body snap straight, as though her sarcasm had sliced him. His face moved out of shadow and into the dim lamplight.

  He looked wounded. Good. She
was tired of being kind and gracious, especially with him. “You want the truth, Michael? You are sure you cannot be offended by it?”

  “Offended? No. Not by the truth. It is an essential foundation for any relationship.”

  “Very well. Here is the truth: you have absolutely nothing to do with my social standing.”

  He opened his mouth, then pressed his lips together. Caroline was sure another I beg your pardon had tried to slip out. “How is that possible?” he said instead.

  “In the same way it is possible for a clergyman’s daughter to become a countess. Michael, that was my doing, not yours.”

  “You cannot have wished to marry the late earl. Your friend told me it was a choice you made only to avoid social ruin.”

  She bit her lip, hard, to stay a quick reply. When she answered, her voice was as measured as any lover of science could wish. “That was my choice too, though. I could certainly have retreated from society if I wished for the quiet country existence my parents led during their lives. But I did not wish that. I am also the niece of a baronet, and I grew up in the pocket of his household. I wanted a life in the highest circles of society, and I chose a marriage that would give it to me.”

  She let this sink in, then added, “They were my choices, Michael. It was my choice to kiss you, and it was my choice to marry the late earl. I do not apologize for these choices, and there is certainly no need for you to.”

  “But the way that society cut you after I left—I did not know that until this evening. I would have made the situation right.”

  “By doing what? Rushing back to London and offering me marriage?” She batted the ridiculous suggestion away with a flick of her hand. “Nonsense. Here is all that happened when we were young: we talked; we kissed; you left. And what happened a few weeks ago? We talked, we… kissed… and again, you left.”

  This blunt recital echoed Michael’s style: logical, clipped, emotionless. Caroline could not bear to describe the spell cast over her nineteen-year-old self by twilight conversation on a terrace, by the deep gaze of young Michael Layward, who seemed to look into her soul. She had felt he knew her, and his kiss was exhilarating, like being swept into a fairy story.

  But such stories always ended. Caroline made no mention of the desolation she had felt when he left London without a word to her. So much had he preoccupied her every thought that she did not at once realize that new invitations were addressed only to her cousin, that whispers followed her down the street. Oh, she knew the power and pain of whispers; maybe that was why she was now so determined to abolish them when she could. Even for Michael.

  Especially for Michael.

  In those quiet long-ago days when she realized Michael was gone, so was the respect in which society had once held her. But what would be the purpose of bringing that up now? She had put those events behind her. She had remade herself, gilded and bright, and she wanted none of this pitying shadow from him.

  Quietly, she added, “Perhaps you are chafing at being misunderstood. But it’s done, Michael. Your departure was for the best. We would have matched even more ill eleven years ago than we would now. Don’t say it.”

  His mouth pressed shut over the inevitable I beg your pardon.

  Oh, that mouth; it was a poem, with its full swoop and determined curve. But all it could utter was prose. He had no heart, only a ledger in which he had now totted up an old equation that he could not solve.

  “I do not think we match ill.” His face was grave, tired. He looked as alone as Caroline felt.

  “You have no inkling,” she said. “You clearly think you mean well, but you’re only indulging yourself at the expense of others.”

  “Indulging myself?” He let out a sharp sound that was not quite a laugh. “Madam, look around you. I’m hardly living in sinful comfort here.” His fragile chair creaked alarmingly as he shifted his weight.

  “I’m not talking of surrounding yourself with silks and pillows and expensive brandy. I’m talking of how you do as you like, heedless of how it affects others. You’ve done that to your tenants for years; you did it to me tonight. You never consider whether the end justifies the means you employ.”

  Michael stood in a whip-quick movement and began to pace the small room in short, choppy steps. He wound amidst the furniture, falling alternately into the light and shadow of the lamp.

  Restless, always restless. She felt still more tired just watching him. It was like talking to a caged animal; all he knew was his own tumult, not the tumult he left behind.

  “I will ignore,” he said in a voice as clipped as his stride, “your inaccurate use of the universal ‘never.’ I assure you that the means, as you put it, preoccupy me constantly.” He booted a puff of a footstool out of his path. “I simply do not always foresee the end. As you once said, I am not a Gypsy prognosticator.”

  “Fair enough. But what I mean is that you don’t consider the cost. You simply blunder ahead with whatever it is you want to do. Perhaps you felt a twinge of guilt when Emily told you how I had been scorned over a decade ago. But did you consider nothing else? Such as the fact that referring to an old humiliation creates a new one? You eased your conscience, but now eighteen people might be whispering about my scandalous ways.”

  His feet bumped up square against the edge of her chaise, and he stared down the length of it, finding her face.

  At last she had his full attention, and she pressed on. “Or to draw a parallel to the land you love so much—did you never consider that if you had simply continued the methods of your father, you might never have bankrupted your dukedom? That all your planned innovation might be foolhardy? Yes, you enjoy it, but there you have it once more: it’s self-indulgent. It pleases no one but you.”

  He sank slowly onto the end of the chaise, like an empty suit of clothes being dropped.

  Caroline folded her legs to get them out of the way of his heedless body. He didn’t look at her or speak, and she suddenly felt a piercing guilt of her own. She had struck too hard at him, maybe, repaying a minor wound with a mortal one.

  He fixed his gaze on the clear light of the lamp on the mantel. “Is that what you truly think of me? That I never consider the cost?”

  She took a breath. “How can I think anything else after the carelessness with which you have treated me? Or Wyverne? All the polite world knows your family used to be wealthy, and now you are not. The problems cannot all have begun with the terrible winter this year. They have no doubt been burgeoning for years.”

  “They have.” His voice was quite calm, almost spiritless.

  She forced down a treacherous urge to clasp his hand, to take it all back. He wanted the truth from her, and he deserved it. For reasons good and ill. “Let us leave the subject of your dukedom. It’s none of my affair. But I must make you understand, Michael, how I have built my life.”

  The room felt cold and dark around her, and she struggled to muster her thoughts into a neat structure. “I chose to make myself a countess, even though I knew what it would cost. I took the gifts I had been granted—youth and beauty and a fair amount of wit—and I sold them as dearly as I could. Even before I met you, I never expected to marry for love. I wanted a different sort of life, and I considered that above all.”

  Mostly, she had—until heedless Michael had caught her eye. Her lips. Her heart. She had not even thought about his title, only about him.

  “When you left London without a word, I set such foolishness behind me and returned to the business of catching a husband. Yes, the matter had become urgent due to the rumors that swirled about my loose morals. But fortunately—maybe due to those very rumors—I caught Stratton’s eye almost at once. I traded my youth for his coin, and in return, we were kind to one other.”

  Kind. As good a word as any for the nine years she’d spent nursemaiding, housekeeping, opening her legs. Whatever her husband required so that his final ye
ars would be pleasant. In his final decline, she spoon-fed him and read to him. She had comforted him, and in return, perhaps he had even loved her. Perhaps, had forty years not separated their ages, she might have come to love him too.

  “He left me a life settlement and a house in London,” she added. “Under the terms of our marriage settlement, the money stays with me, not the Stratton earldom, even if I remarry. Thus the constant attention of the puppies.” A thought struck her. “Maybe you and I are not so different, after all, both selling ourselves in marriage. But I’ve already sold myself once, Michael. I won’t do it again. I have earned the right to live for my own pleasure at last. And you insult me by offering an apology for the life I have built.”

  As he had promised, he did not look offended. After a long moment of scrutiny, he said, “I do understand what you are saying.”

  She blinked. “Truly?”

  “Yes. But what I am not sure of is why.”

  “Why what?”

  His dark brows knit. “Why do you value a life in high society? What is the purpose of it all? You have criticized me for finding little pleasure in life, but that is because of the demands of my dukedom. You’ve called me self-indulgent for submerging myself in those same demands, for meeting them as I judge best. You, though—you have constructed your life solely to fulfill your own desires. Yet I do not believe you find much enjoyment in it.”

  He might as well have smacked her across the face. Caroline felt his words as a blow, nauseating and swift, and she wadded herself more tightly against the arm of the chaise.

  He leaned against the low back of the chaise. His long hands fidgeted as he formulated his next thought. “I know you want to be needed. And I know you do not particularly care for the attentions of your suitors. So I wonder why you criticize me for burdening myself with obligations that prevent my own happiness when you are doing the same. They merely take a different form.”

  He turned his head to look her in the eye, and she was fully aware of him not as a man, but a duke: powerful and cold and inexorable. “What is the purpose of this independence you’re so determined to protect? What good is it if you use it only to spend time you don’t enjoy with people you don’t care for? How is that different from the years of your marriage?” Leaning closer, he brushed her cheek with a questing fingertip. “What do you really want, Caroline? Do you know?”