A Perfect Gentleman

by Barbara Metzger

  “Trust me,” Stony told her, “your aunt would not have let one of these fortune-hunting rakes within a mile of Miss Isabelle.”

  Word must have gone out that Wellstone was declaring Miss Kane off-limits, for few others approached the gilt chairs where she and Stony sat with Gwen and whichever of her cisisbeos was around at the time. Ellianne was starting to recover from the viscount’s high-handedness. He was only trying to protect her, she told herself.

  A bit later, one of the handsomest men she had seen—not as good-looking as Lord Wellstone, of course—stopped in front of their seats. He was as tall as the viscount but thinner, not as broad-shouldered. He was dark-haired instead of fair, with the brooding look of a fallen angel. He might have been Stony’s age, but his eyes seemed older, duller, harder.

  He bowed and said, “I say, Lady Wellstone, I have been pining away, waiting for someone to introduce me to this goddess in our midst so I might worship at her feet. Will you perform the honors?”

  Stony answered instead of Gwen: “No, Blanchard, she will not. The lady is not a goddess, her feet do not require adoration, and she is not going out on the balcony with you, so go find another pretty pigeon to pluck.”

  Ellianne felt a blush starting at those same feet. Gwen gasped and batted at Stony’s sleeve with her closed fan, but Strickland laughed and said, “He’s got you dead to rights. Takes a rake to know one, eh, Blanchard?”

  Blanchard could have caused a scene. He could have demanded satisfaction for the insult, but not in Lady Rockford’s ballroom. He was barely tolerated in society as it was, and could ill afford to lose his chances of finding an heiress. Not even a Cit would let Blanchard marry his daughter if he were banished from the ton. He had no choice but to bow to Gwen again, nod at Strickland, say, “Your servant, Miss Kane,” even though they had not been introduced, and turn his back on Wellstone.

  “That was dreadful!” Ellianne would have struck Stony with her fan, too, but too many eyes were watching them.

  Stony’s jaw was set. “He is not fit company for you.”

  Ellianne raised her chin. “I’ll thank you to let me decide for myself. I am old enough to select my own friends.”

  “Friends? Do you really think that loose screw wanted to be your friend? Not even you could be so bacon-brained.”

  Gwen decided she had a sudden thirst for lemonade and fled on Lord Strickland’s arm. Ellianne and Stony sat in angry silence. He tapped his cane on the floor. She stared at the dancers.

  Then Sir John Thomasford bowed over Ellianne’s hand. “Good evening, Miss Kane. It is a pleasure to see you again, and in such fine looks.” He nodded in Stony’s direction. “Wellstone.”

  Sir John was not looking so fine, Stony decided. He had always seemed slimy, but now he resembled something that had been dragged out of a cave into the light.

  Another naked girl had been found murdered, this one with brown eyes, thank goodness, so Ellianne had not needed to go to the morgue. She’d made sure Lattimer went, though, to see that the woman was buried properly. She also paid for one of the Bow Street artists to draw a sketch of the dead female, and offered a reward for her identification. The young woman’s landlady had come forth to claim the purse. The woman was, indeed, a lady of the night, but the landlady went to sleep early. She never saw her boarders’ patrons.

  The newspapers got wind of the story and were starting to clamor for action, so the coroner’s office and Bow Street must both be under pressure to solve the case. The bloodsucker should have stayed at the morgue, then, or gone home for a good night’s rest. Instead he was asking Miss Kane if she cared to stroll around the room with him.

  Damnation, Stony thought, he should have put the pebble in Ellianne’s shoe.

  “I wish you’d stay so I can hear any new developments in the case.” He lied. The last thing he wanted to hear was if this highflier had her throat slit, too.

  “There are no new developments,” Sir John answered curtly, holding out his arm to Ellianne.

  Stony got up when she did. “I think I will join you on that walk. One gets stiff sitting around. How was that for a little morgue humor, eh? Stiff?” Ellianne glared and Sir John curled his lip. Stony could not tell if that was a smile or not.

  The pebble in his shoe was deuced painful. So was watching that oily maggot touch Ellianne, lean his head closer to hers, whisper sweet forensics in her ear.

  “Devil take it, I think my foot must be broken, after all. Your pardon, Sir John, we’ll have to go home.”

  “I could see Miss Kane returned to her house,” the man offered.

  And the devil would wear ice skates before Stony let that happen. “What, alone? What are you thinking, man? Miss Kane is a young lady of impeccable virtue, not one of your dead demireps. You ought to apologize for speaking of her that way. In fact, I don’t think you ought to be speaking to her at all, not after you’ve been mucking about at the morgue. Come, Miss Kane, I need your arm to lean on.”

  “How dare you?”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “I have never been so embarrassed in my entire life.”

  That was doing it too brown, for a woman who walked around with boiled potatoes in her pocket. At least Ellianne had waited until she and Stony were alone in the carriage. Not that they should have been alone, of course. Gwen had taken one look at the pugnacious pair and chose to have one of her gentlemen friends drive her home. She mumbled words to the effect that they were old enough, and people were already talking, and if they were going to be tossing insults at each other, then she was not going to sit in the middle.

  No one sat in the middle. Ellianne sat as far from Stony as possible, in the corner of the coach, as rigid as his cane. He was congratulating himself at separating her from the fortune-hunters and the funereal knight, not that Sir John’s avocation precluded his avarice. He was also glad he’d had the foresight not to sit opposite Miss Kane in the carriage.

  “You thoroughly offended a friend of mine,” she was saying.

  He could see by the coach lanterns that her brow was lowered and her hands were tightly clasped around her beaded reticule. Lud, if she had the pistol in that thing, loaded or not, he should have ridden up with the driver. It was too late to turn tail now, so he spoke his thoughts out loud: “If you are referring to Sir John Thomasford, the man is not your friend.”

  “He has been kind to me, I will have you know.”

  “Of course he has. He wants your money. Not even he could think to win you over with his good looks. Unless you are attracted to eels, of course, all slimy and slithering. The man never bothered to attend social gatherings before. I doubt if he even likes women. Live ones, anyway. The fact that you show an interest in his pet projects puts ideas in his head that never existed before.”

  “Are you accusing me of flirting with Sir John? Of leading him on?”

  “If the shoe fits….” Which reminded him. He removed the pebble from his evening pump.

  Ellianne inhaled sharply. “That is insufferable!”

  “That’s what I was beginning to think. There is no permanent damage, though, I am certain.”

  “So you lied and you cheated and you made people feel sorry for you, just so you could insult them?”

  Stony pretended to think a minute. “I cannot recall insulting anyone who showed me the least sympathy. In fact, most of the dirty dishes I sent off were wishing me to perdition, not a quick recovery.”

  “There was no reason to insult Sir John.”

  There was every reason: Ellianne liked him. “He was being too familiar.”

  “He kissed my hand! What about Mr. Blanchard? You would not permit that poor man to make my acquaintance.”

  “You said it: He is poor, but hoping to remedy that shortcoming with a wealthy wife. There have been so many ugly rumors about him accosting heiresses that I would have suspected him of carrying off your sister, except he never left London. I checked, and at his rooms at the Albany, too. He’d be after you like Atlas
if he had her, besides, to get more of her blunt.”

  “Then you should have told me, and let me decide for myself if I wished to meet him. You should have asked me about those other men, and Sir John. Instead you had them all angry and upset.”

  “They will recover. In fact, I’d wager a guinea that Blanchard finds a way to be introduced before the end of the week.”

  “Then I shall get rid of him myself. Without your interference. And I shall treat Sir John as I see fit. Without your insults. Is that clear?”

  As clear as the window beside Stony, fogged with his breathing. “You do not know men,” was all he said.

  “I know that I did not hire you to watch over me like a mother hen with one chick. You were supposed to help me meet people, not frighten them away. For that matter, you were not supposed to make arrangements with Mr. Lattimer on your own, either. We were supposed to deliberate together, if I recall. You never discussed visiting the jewelers with me, or hiring the additional Runners.”

  “Are you worried I am overspending your account?”

  “Of course not. I am concerned that you do not consider me capable of managing anything.”

  “I took you to the Wellstone Home, didn’t I? You have already made a difference there, I understand.”

  “That is not what I mean. Your patronizing attitude is. Even now, you relegate me to doing good deeds, while you decide the course of the investigation, the course of my London sojourn, and the course of my friendships. I will not have it, I say. I shall not be treated as an inferior being by one who….” Her voice trailed off.

  “Yes? One who what? One who believes in protecting womenfolk? Or one who sells his soul for the price of a meal? One who cannot afford to keep his dependents in silk and furs and jewels? Just how inferior do you consider me, Miss Kane?”

  “I was going to say one who spends his days and nights among the pleasure seekers of Town.”

  “Like hell you were. You consider me as dirt beneath your feet. You always have. You respect no man who cannot match your income.”

  “That is untrue! I admire what you have done with the home for girls, and how kind you are to Gwen.” He made a snorting sound, like Atlas having a bad dream, or downing a good cucumber sandwich.

  “Well, I do. I believe I have shown you more respect from the very beginning than you have shown me.”

  Stony’s patience was wearing thin. “If I did not respect you, Miss Kane, I’d have your skirts up to your ears right now and your hair down to your rear. And that is the honest truth.”

  Ellianne’s imagination was wearing silk garters, to her dismay. That was his fault, too. “How dare you! You are exactly what Aunt Lally said, a lewd and licentious, good-for-nothing lordling!”

  “Aha! She does speak!”

  “That is not the point! Your superior attitude is reprehensible, and your rakish thoughts are repugnant.”

  “As opposed to your holier-than-thou airs?”

  “I do not have airs,” she said, her chin so far in the atmosphere she might have bumped it on the carriage roof if they hit a rut.

  The carriage interior was only dimly lighted by the lanterns and the street lamps as they passed, to Stony’s regret, because a redhead in a rant was a magnificent sight. Next time he’d make sure to aggravate her in the afternoon. She sure as Hades was ruining his night, going on about respect and evil thoughts, as if a man could control his mind. Stony had enough trouble governing his body, when he could hear her breath coming in quick rasps, as if she were in the throes of a different kind of emotion. Her chest was heaving, as it would if she were making love. Her words were making as much sense as the hungry murmurings of a woman at pleasure. He could almost see her vibrating with anger—or passion. He fought to get those images out of his mind while she raged on, condemning him for everything since Adam got Eve thrown out of Eden by eating the apple.

  He lost the battle. “Oh, hell.” Before Ellianne could say another word, or raise her hand—or her knee—he slid across the seat, pulled her closer, and kissed her. At first it was as if he were kissing his cane. She was stiff and bony and cold. What the deuce had he been thinking? But he held her tighter, pressing her body against his until he could feel lush femininity against chest. He used his tongue to soften her lips and his breath to warm her. “Please,” he whispered, or perhaps pleaded.

  Tentatively, reluctantly, but inevitably, Ellianne brought her hands up to wrap around his shoulders, to touch his firm back, his neck, his wavy hair. She tilted her head to a different angle, sliding her lips against his even as her body leaned into his. She stopped thinking, stopped breathing, stopped being Miss Ellianne Kane. She was a cloud, a river, a rainbow. She could fly; she could float.

  She would pass out if she did not get air. Ellianne pulled back, and Stony’s arms instantly released her. He was breathing hard, too, with a sheen of moisture on his brow. He put more distance between them, eyeing her cautiously, as if wondering if he should leap to his death from the moving carriage or wait for her to shoot him. When she made no move toward violence, he reached up to straighten his cravat.

  His neckcloth was not the only thing askew.

  “I….” she began, but had to wait for her heart to stop pounding louder than her voice. “I shall not be needing your services any longer.”

  “You need me,” he stated unequivocally. “A lot of other men would not have stopped there. Do you wish me to apologize?”

  She shook her head, completing the damage to her hairdo that his eager fingers had begun. She tried to gather some of the loose pins. “No, I would not trust your sincerity. How many times have you sworn that I was safe from your blandishments?”

  He tried to make her smile. “One kiss is not exactly a blandishment. A minor beguilement, maybe, but definitely not a blandishment.”

  She saw no humor in the situation. “I do not need you or your lust. That was not part of our agreement.”

  “My lust? Am I the only one with fevered blood? I distinctly recall hearing some tiny mews of pleasure during our little embrace.”

  Little embrace? Ellianne did not think she could survive anything bigger. “You must have heard the carriage springs. But that is irrelevant. I am not paying you for sexual services.”

  Now he grew angry. “My ‘sexual services,’ as you say, are not now and never have been for sale. Or did you believe I put a price on my kisses? How much do you think your sighs were worth? Forgive me, Miss Kane, the carriage springs. A pound? I wonder what you would be willing to pay for completion. Perhaps I could retire after a night of total satiation.”

  “Stop that! You are being vulgar and hateful, as if you were the one who was offended.”

  “I was. I am. I thought you knew me better than that, dash it.”

  “And I thought you knew me better than to think I would enjoy being mauled in a carriage!”

  “I did. And you did. Enjoy it, that is, until you remembered to be the prim and proper Miss Kane, with everything under your cool command, as if you had one of your lists in hand and emotion was not on it.”

  “There is nothing wrong with being prim and proper, or organized, or in control of one’s emotions.”

  “Except that it is a lie. You are a living, breathing woman, not a marvelous counting pig, not a beautiful glass figurine, not a blasted army general.”

  “You dare accuse me of lying? You with your clumsy cane? You don’t even have a limp!”

  “Well, you don’t have a parrot.”

  Miss Kane hopped out of the coach before he could assist her down. She opened the front door herself, without waiting for either Stony to knock or Timms to hobble to the front hall.

  She did not slam the door in Stony’s face, which he took for the best invitation he was going to get. They had to finish their discussion, which meant, he supposed, another apology. He followed her into the parlor, trying to decide which sin to apologize for first. Lying was bad. Calling her names was worse. Kissing her was….

&nb
sp; “Snake eyes!”

  Timms was on his knees, but he was not praying. Ellianne’s aunt and the butler were throwing dice in front of the sofa. When they heard the arrivals at the parlor door, Timms crawled to his slippered feet and kicked the dice cup and some coins under the furniture. Mrs. Goudge snatched open her tapestry workbag, stashed the wine bottle inside, and took out some knitting.

  Adjusting his spectacles, Timms begged Miss Kane’s forgiveness. “Tempted by the devil, I was.”

  Ellianne glared at both of them, but especially at her aunt. “The devil does not wear silk petticoats.”

  Aunt Lally glared right back, her lips pursed shut. Ellianne could feel Wellstone’s presence right behind her. The dratted man was most likely laughing at her and her household. Without looking in his direction, she told her aunt she might as well speak, for his lordship knew they had no parrot.

  “And not above time, I’ll have you know,” Aunt Lally said. Once started, she intended to have her say, company present or not. “As for Timms, he promised you he’d stay away from the racetrack and the pubs. By Saint Aloysius’s swive-sacks, what more do you want? The bloke’s too old for the sheets, so what’s he supposed to do for fun?”

  Stony was grinning until Mrs. Goudge raised her knitting needle like an épée and advanced on her niece. Before he could step in front of Ellianne as a shield, the older woman lifted a lock of red hair on the needle’s tip. That lock was trailing down Ellianne’s shoulder, not tucked into the neatly pinned arrangement she’d worn when she left the Sloane Street house.

  “As for you, missy, you’re a fine one to talk, coming home from some swell’s do looking like you’ve been done, all right. I warned you to watch out for silver-tongued toffs, didn’t I?”

  Stony looked around. He was the only toff, or titled gentleman, present. He thought of running, but he was too late. That knitting needle, with half an unfinished glove dangling off one end, was poking into his midsection.

  “As for you, you Romeo for rent”—the needle jabbed an inch lower—“we don’t have any parrots.” Another inch. “And we don’t have any soiled doves here, either.” One more inch and his manhood would be wearing a mitten. “Understand?”