by Jaimey Grant
“No,” she snapped right back. “I’m not insane. I’m lonely!”
That shut him up proper. He stared, unable to fathom the idea that the rich, cosseted blond beauty before him was lonely. People like her didn’t get lonely. They surrounded themselves with other people just like them and talked about their money and possessions, never letting ordinary cares touch their sparkling existence.
“I thought…” she sighed deeply. “I just thought…you were, too.”
“Oh, Jenny-love,” he whispered, feeling her pain tear a hole in his chest, “that’s no reason to indulge in something you should only share with your husband.”
Their gazes met, held. Both were darkened by moonlight and bitter thoughts. Hers shimmered with repressed tears. He would not have been surprised if his did as well.
He wanted to take her in his arms, comfort her, but he knew if he touched so much as a strand of her honey-gold hair, his tenuous control would slip. He’d wanted her since he first met her and he suspected he always would. When a single tear slipped down her pale ivory cheek, he stepped forward, his control be damned.
Jenny, horrified at her confession, doubly horrified at her shattered pride, and triply horrified at her loss of control, fled.
The blasted ball continued on interminably. Dare finally grew weary of standing around, waiting for Jenny to reappear again. She’d left the ballroom several minutes ago, after what had appeared to be a heated argument with her brother and sister.
He hadn’t liked the look on her face. In his experience, when someone’s face took on that particular cast, said person was teetering on the brink of total breakdown.
And Jenny, sweet, charismatic, effervescent Jenny, was lonely.
He turned and walked in the direction she’d gone without really making the conscious decision to do so. He kept an eye out for her overprotective brother, not wanting to tangle with him, and another out for his own brother, knowing, without a doubt, that Miles would not approve.
After a few minutes of searching, Dare finally found Jenny, huddled up on a broad settee in what appeared to be an unused antechamber in the Riesley house. Everything was under Holland covers. Jenny had thrown back the one covering her perch.
Dare closed the door, locking it against unwelcome intruders, and approached her much the way one would a wounded deer.
He stood beside the sofa. “Jenny-love,” he whispered. She looked up at him with such misery that he gasped. “Oh, Jenny. What could possibly be so bad to warrant such misery?”
A fresh torrent answered his question and she buried her face in her folded arms, shoulders shaking with the force of her sobs.
Dare could no longer keep his distance. Jenny was hurting and that was something he wouldn’t stand for.
He eased down beside her, gently taking her in his arms. Smoothing his hands over her back, he asked, “Tell me what it is, Jenny-love. I’ll make everything better.”
She sniffled, lifted her head slightly and accepted the handkerchief he held out to her. After wiping her face—amazingly unmarked by her grief—she sniffled again.
“Con says I mustn’t speak with you,” she admitted after a long moment. “Gwen agrees. I have not seen any evidence that you are unworthy of my…friendship. But they wouldn’t listen. Con mentioned a girl you seduced and left but I told him it was nonsense, that you would never do such a thing and—” she broke off at the expression on his face.
“What?” Her pale brows furrowed in confusion at his guilty silence. “Oh my. It’s true? You seduced a gently bred girl and abandoned her? How could you?”
Dare stared at her, unable to allow her to place all the blame on him as everyone else had. He opened his mouth to offer what miserable little defense he had but she forestalled him.
Shaking her head, she decided, “No, it is as I told Con. Nonsense. If you… granted her your attentions, it was as much her fault as yours, I’m sure.”
He stared at her, one black brow lifted in utter astonishment. “You would trust me…just like that? No explanation or defense on my part. Just your own belief that I would never seduce someone who was innocent.”
Jenny offered a blinding smile. “Of course. You may be maddening at times, even less than gentlemanly at others, but you are not a scoundrel.”
In that moment, Dare was quite sure he loved her. No one, not even his own twin, had ever taken his part in the whole miserable debacle. No one had trusted that there were circumstances that led to his behavior, not the least of which happened to be the fact that Belinda Markwell had honored half the county with her attentions and he had simply been yet another to fall for her dubious charms. It was moot that she had been only nineteen at the time.
“Thank you,” he told Jenny now, from the bottom of his bitterly blackened heart.
It may not have actually been true before, but it was now.
Dare glared at his reflection. Seducer of innocents. Ruiner of reputations.
The devil incarnate.
After being told that he was honorable, what does he do? He seduces the one person who actually believed he wasn’t like that.
He groaned. Memories of last night, Jenny, and pale moonlight spilling over silken skin coalesced in his mind, making him stumble blindly for a chair. How could he be so bloody stupid? He couldn’t even blame drink, as he’d not had one all night.
Raking a hand through his sleep-mussed hair, he wondered bitterly if he had completely lost his mind. Lady Genevieve Northwicke, beautiful, daughter-of-a-duke Jenny, was no longer an innocent virgin eagerly awaiting her husband’s induction into the mysteries of the marriage bed. Oh no. She now knew exactly what would happen, with a few little extras thrown in for good measure.
He had taken his time with her, made her want him as he wanted her and when she had breathlessly begged him to take her, he’d readily complied, not even giving a thought to the fact that her family was only a few hundred feet away, dancing in the ballroom.
And it had been everything he could have dreamed. She was as passionate as he’d supposed, giving as well as taking, making him ache just to recall her words and actions. She’d excelled as a student, barely blushing at her inquisitive queries that bordered on indecent.
And he’d thrived in teaching her things he was sure she would probably never learn from whatever prosy old bore she ended up marrying.
She should be pledging her life to him, he thought with an inner snarl. But…
He really was the cad everyone thought him. And the worst part was, he couldn’t marry her.
No matter how desperately he wanted to.
She deserved a man who could give her the world. A man who wasn’t tied down by obligations that took him away for months at a time. A man worthy of her and her station.
A man who wasn’t considered the black sheep of a family that had its fair—unfair?—share of balmy members.
And if he wasn’t there to distract her, she would have her chance at a better man.
He suppressed a growl at the thought of a better man touching her lily-white skin, having the right to see her naked, bring her pleasure, satisfy her every curious whim.
For the first time in his life, Dare wished the past undone. Worse than that, he wished he were Miles.
Rising, Dare dressed. His movements were precise, done without thought, mechanical. In less than an hour, he was packed.
Less than five minutes after that, he was gone.
Chapter Nine
The Prestwich household rose just after dawn as was their habit, to prepare the day’s bread and begin the many other chores required to ensure the sufficient running of a house.
It was a day like any other. Except for the fact that when West scratched at Mr. Darius’s chamber, he received no response.
It had become routine for the butler to serve Dare in whatever capacity he could. The young man’s search for a valet had not gone well and while West openly disapproved of many of the young man’s activities and attitudes, he also se
cretly liked Dare.
And so he stood outside the young master’s door, a perplexed frown marring his normally rigid countenance. He entered the chamber, an action he would never have performed without permission had he not been so uneasy about the preternatural silence.
He was actually less than surprised when he saw the tangled bedclothes, empty wardrobe… and two letters propped up on the washstand.
Bri sat up in bed, nibbling dry toast and trying very hard to keep her stomach firmly in place. She hadn’t had morning sickness with any of her other pregnancies; why would she have it with this latest?
Annoyed, her command to enter was terse when there came a scratching at her door. West entered, holding two sheets of folded parchment in one hand.
“My lady, these were left by Mr. Darius.”
Bri’s eyebrows threatened to disappear into her curly red hair. Reaching out a hand, she demanded, “Where is he?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, my lady.”
Her ladyship scowled. “You know everything, West. How could Dare’s precipitate flight get past you?”
“I’m sure I don’t know.”
Lady Prestwich shook her head at his evasive answer, opening the note labeled Bri. She quickly scanned the contents, swearing in such a way that even West, who had heard some rather colorful language from his unusual mistress, winced.
Without a thought to the impropriety of reading someone else’s correspondence, Bri also read the other note. Instead of swearing, her face went unnaturally pale.
“Dear God, how could he?” she breathed.
She gasped suddenly, groping for the edge of the bed. West, a little out of his element in the lady’s bedchamber, nevertheless realized she was trying to get to the chamberpot. He reached it before her and held it out as she emptied the nonexistent contents of her stomach.
In that moment, seeing his beloved mistress in such agony, West was quite sure he could have cheerfully strangled Mr. Darius Prestwich.
Lady Prestwich spent the rest of that day contemplating ways of murdering Dare that would cause him as much pain as humanly possibly.
She also wondered how the devil she was going to tell her husband while preventing him from doing much the same thing. She was quite sure she’d never be able to convince him.
Her thoughts went to Miles and she couldn’t help but wonder why Dare had not left a note for his twin. But then, they didn’t behave as the few twins she knew; they seemed constantly at each other’s throats and not in the brotherly fashion that most siblings were. Their rivalry seemed almost…bitter.
But mostly her thoughts centered on Lady Genevieve Northwicke. She knew the young lady well enough to know that her headstrong curiosity was probably as much or more to blame for her predicament than Dare was—not that she didn’t place the bulk of the responsibility squarely upon the gentleman’s shoulders.
Bri sighed, her shoulders slumping. Could she have been so very wrong about Dare? She had loved him from the first moment she met him, seeing in him a kindred spirit. He was injured inside, hurting, and using humor and wit—along with a healthy dose of biting sarcasm—to cover it up. He was everything she would have wanted in a brother and her sympathy for his feelings of self-doubt gave her an insight into his, sometimes, odd actions.
But now she wondered if perhaps she’d been very, very wrong about him. It irked her that she could so misjudge another person, especially one in the same family as her husband—the only other person she’d so grievously, and erroneously, reviled.
“Lady Connor Northwicke, my lady.”
As thrilled as she always was to see her dearest friend, Bri nevertheless wished she had informed West that she was “not at home” to callers.
Rising, she embraced her friend warmly. “Verena! What brings you by? I wasn’t even aware you were in Town yet.”
Lady Verena, her violet eyes twinkling with some secret merriment, explained her sudden appearance. “Connor was lonely without me so he sent a retinue of servants to conduct me hither. I just arrived last night and so thought to come here immediately this morning.” Her smile disappeared, replaced by concern. “Are you quite all right, my dear? You look peaked.”
Bri glanced at the door. West lingered. “Tea, West.” He bowed, withdrawing, silent as a ghost.
“Oh, Verena, I am in a quandary.”
Moving to the settee, the two ladies sat, their arms linked companionably.
“Tell me, dear. What has you so troubled?”
Bri explained, her fingers uncharacteristically pleating and un-pleating the muslin of her skirts. When she realized what she was doing, she uttered an oath, apologizing immediately afterward.
“So, now I’m at an impasse. I can’t tell Adam because nothing on earth will stop him from committing murder. And obviously, I can’t tell Con as he would do much the same.”
Verena’s horrified look spoke volumes. “Are you sure? I mean…have you talked to Jenny?”
“Dare didn’t come right out and confess anything in his note, but I assure you, the tone was far too intimate and apologetic to be otherwise.”
“Oh dear,” murmured Verena, her shoulders slumping just a bit. “This is quite a pickle, isn’t it?”
Bri released a staccato laugh. “A pickle, yes. I’m just not sure what to do about it short of gelding Dare.”
Verena was oddly silent, her dark brows creased in thought. “I’m not sure you need to do anything,” she finally replied, slowly.
Bri leaned forward. “What do you mean?”
“Well, even if what you suspect it true, there may not be any consequences. Perhaps Jenny will emerge with little more than a loss of virtue.”
“In other words, I hold my peace until we find out whether or not she’s enceinte.”
“Precisely.”
“And the note?”
Verena’s gaze was frankly puzzled. “What about it?”
Bri shrugged. “It’s plain he doesn’t want to marry her, or can’t. I wonder if it would be wise to give her the note that he left. She may take it as a sign of his good regard despite the goodbye inherent in the message. Would it not be cruel to raise her hopes?”
“You feel she may move on if she believed his heart was not constant?” Bri nodded. Verena pondered that idea a moment. Then, “Would you have moved on had Adam done the same?”
“He’s gone? Just like that? He said nothing?”
Realizing that her voice rose alarmingly with each word, Lady Genevieve took a deep calming breath. It would not do for her to lose her poise now.
She stared at Lady Brianna Prestwich hopefully, hardly daring to believe that Dare might have left something for her, some word, some sign that he was returning one day or that her feelings were reciprocated.
Bri shook her head, patting Jenny’s hand. “No, dear, he said nothing. He was gone before the servants were even up this morning.”
Jenny was sure her face was crumpling. She knew her heart was. It folded into itself until it resembled nothing more than a hard little stone.
After last night, he would just leave? Had he no honor after all? Dear God, she’d given him her virginity! The least he could do was stay and see how she fared.
A shiver traversed her spine at the memory of what he’d done to her. She wanted a repeat of the encounter even though she knew it was insane and wrong to want such a thing outside of marriage. It only led to heartache and illegitimate offspring.
“Are you cold, Lady Genevieve?” Bri asked solicitously.
Coming swiftly to herself, Jenny shook her head, denying the truth that she was indeed very cold—but from inside.
“Is anything wrong, Lady Genevieve?”
Jenny gave a jerky shake of her head, rising to her feet. She simply had to get away. If she stayed another moment, she would break down and cry.
He wasn’t worth her tears, she told herself sternly. Accepting her outer clothing from the butler, she hurried out to her carriage.
She tried to
shrug off the incipient pain, telling herself she had to forget what happened between them and go on from there.
It became her mantra.
Lady Genevieve Northwicke was seen at all the ton events a person could possibly attend in one season. She could be found at four to five events in each evening, sparkling and shining as never before.
Society watched her in open curiosity, wondering at her odd behavior. She had always been a pleasant girl, but never had she so openly flirted and charmed her partners.
She seemed to show marked interest in Mr. Miles Prestwich, the significance of which was not lost on anyone. She had previously enjoyed an oddly close friendship with that gentleman’s twin brother and it was universally acknowledged that she was nursing a broken heart.
Had Jenny been privy to any of these rumors, she’d have been horrified. As it was, she was so miserably lonely that she acted purely on instinct. Everything she said, everything she did was mechanical. She spent her days and evenings like an automaton, going through the motions of living without really experiencing any of it.
And yet, she would have been the first to deny a broken heart as her malady. Her pride would not let her admit that Dare had broken her heart, making her feel less than worthy.
A month after he left, with no word from him, Jenny finally gave up…at least, she told herself she did. He wasn’t coming back, he’d moved on, forgotten her. She was nothing more than a convenient, there for his pleasure and cast aside.
How lowering.
Hyde Park was Society’s showcase. It was there—in sparkling raiment and glittering jewels, with high-stepping cattle and flashy carriages—that the upper echelons preened like so many peacocks.
It was where Lady Genevieve Northwicke and her sister, Lady Guinevere shined. They usually rode with their brother and sister-in-law but occasionally they could be found in the company of whatever gentlemen had managed to catch their attention.
And they were inseparable as never before. Jenny clung to her sister as if afraid to lose her. And Gwen, puzzled, clung right back, a niggling fear in the back of her mind telling her that something was very, very wrong.
