“Hmmm, yes,” Evangeline considered, “but he’s only indolent at these types of things. He used to be a soldier—a very good one, by all accounts, commended by Wellington himself, and part of the delegation to the Congress of Vienna last summer. Superior with languages or some such. But he came back from the war…different, they say.”
“Different?” This did not sound like a good thing. “Is he violent?”
“Quite the opposite—a sworn pacifist!”
Tamsin fetched her spectacles out of her reticule and put them on, the better to see this interesting, pacifistic specimen. The man had a sort of beauty in repose—as if his conscience were as clean and unruffled as his cravat. “Perhaps he was too long at war?”
Lady Evangeline shrugged. “Either way, no one has any expectations of him. So no one could expect him to make an offer for you. He’s the second son—hence his place in the army—but he’s sold out or some such. Insufficient ambition, some say.”
Such facts might be accounted in the fellow's favor, if she were seriously considering Lady Evangeline’s idea. Which she wasn’t. Not seriously.
Not yet.
“He accompanies his aunt, the Countess Cathcart, in Society, as the earl doesn’t care for these things,” Evangeline went on. “Rumor has it the earl doesn’t care for the countess, but I suppose that’s nobody’s business but theirs. He always retires like this, Simon does. Never socializes, never dances, but also never gambles. Nor, more importantly, lights himself on fire.”
Definitely a point in his favor.
“What’s more, he doesn’t have opinions. And he’s as handsome as the day is long. Just look at him.”
Tamsin was looking. At the tumble of sandy hair. And the sweep of too-beautiful lashes. And the smooth cut of his jaw. “I suppose if I were going to all the ugly trouble of being ruined, I might want something beautiful to look at.”
“Exactly. He’s eminently suitable for the purpose,” Lady Evangeline concluded. “Uncomplicated, simple Simon. Aren’t you, Simon?” She prodded the sleeping man awake with her slippered foot.
But instead of leaping up in an embarrassed haste to be caught sleeping at a ball by two young ladies, or rage at being so rudely interrupted mid-masculine slumber, this Simon just opened his eyes and gave them a warm, sleepy smile. “Of course I am. Is that you, then, Evie, old girl?”
“It is. Good evening, Simon. Do get up, dear man. Miss Lesley has a proposition for you.”
Simple Simon did not get up, but merely turned his sleepy eye upon Tamsin as if he were perfectly used to being awakened from slumber by females with propositions. “Does she?”
“Do I?” Tamsin echoed, and then firmed her voice. “Yes. Yes, indeed, I believe I do.”
He looked at her with the same sort of simple, happy expectation that her father’s dogs exhibited whenever Papa so much as rose to his feet. But this Simon Cathcart did not, in fact, rise to his feet. He just lay there smiling, happy to be propositioned. Or not. “Don’t dance, I’m afraid,” he offered. “Three left feet, don’t you know?”
Tamsin did not know, especially as he had but two such long appendages stretched out before him. But if she doubted his mathematical abilities, she had to admit his smile was personable and his demeanor pleasant. “Not dancing, I thank you. I’m seeking…more of a personal, private favor,” she hedged, unsure of how best to phrase a ruinous proposition to a gentleman wallflower. Unsure if she should make the proposition. “A temporary alliance, if you will.”
His happy countenance clouded. “Don’t know about an alliance—had a bit too much of that sort of thing in the army. Treaties, pacts, alliances—not worth the paper they’re written on.”
Lady Evangeline let out an elegant sigh and then bluntly declared, “Miss Lesley desires to be ruined.”
“Lightly ruined.” Tamsin lowered her voice in the hope that not everyone in the house might have overheard them. “Very lightly. For appearance’s sake, and not in actuality.”
“Not in actuality?” Mr. Simon Cathcart frowned and smiled and turned down his mouth all at the same time in the perfect picture of sleepy confusion. “Where’s the fun in that?”
Tamsin strove for logic, even in the midst of an illogical situation. Which meant that she really was considering ruining herself with someone, if not this illogical, smiling, different man. “Our agreement would be more of a business arrangement, sir, not for…amusement.”
“Right ho.” He took the correction amiably. “So I’m to be in the business of ruining young ladies?”
“Only me, sir,” Tamsin clarified in as quiet a voice as possible. “No other young ladies.”
“Not at the moment, perhaps.” He grinned up at her. “But if I’m successful, who knows who else might come knocking on my door? Don’t know if I can chance it, Miss…”
“Lesley. How do you do?” Tamsin fell back upon civility to allay her confusion at his nonsensical style of talk.
“Like a fellow, Lesley,” he observed apropos of nothing. “But you’re not a fellow at all, what?”
“No, I’m not.” She wouldn’t be in this predicament if she were. “I wonder if we might speak privately?” Where she might more logically evaluate if this Simple Simon really was the suitable masculine wallflower Lady Evangeline had thought him.
“Oh, I shouldn’t think so,” he refused baldly. “Load of trouble, that—being alone with a young lady.”
“But I should like our arrangement to remain private, known to no one but the three of us assembled here. And I give you my word that no other young lady will hear it from my lips.”
“Nor mine,” Lady Evangeline swore. “And to make sure I know nothing of the affaire, I shall leave you to arrange it as you will.” And she swanned herself off, leaving Tamsin alone with the recumbent, reluctant man.
“Don’t know if such a thing can be arranged,” Mr. Cathcart observed. “Least not by me.”
His willingness to admit to this fault was actually a decided mark in his favor. Tamsin began to see more and more the advantages of an amiably biddable man.
“I shall do all the arranging, Mr. Cathcart—you needn’t fear. I will instruct you,” she informed him in the same kind of quiet but firm tones her governess—who was the very picture of a dedicated bluestocking—had used on Mama whenever she got sniffy about Tamsin’s studies. “I shall teach you how to go on.”
Simon Cathcart’s face cleared in obvious relief. He was the very picture of a man who was a proverbial open book. “Very thoughtful of you, Miss…?”
“Lesley. Miss Thomasina Lesley. My father is Colonel Oliver Lesley of the Royal Marines and His Majesty’s Ship Audacious.” Even as she said it, she hated that her bona fides were not her own, but borrowed from her father. But as she seemed to be arranging her own ruination, perhaps it were best if she kept her old-fashioned papa out of it. “Tamsin,” she offered, “to my friends.”
“Colonel Lesley? Know a deuced load of colonels—was one myself—but don’t think I know any marines, if that’s what you want, Miss…”
“Lesley.” Tamsin began to understand the depth of his differences. “I do not seek a marine. I seek to be lightly ruined.”
He nodded and smiled as if she made every sense. But then he frowned. “Why?”
This was actually a very good question. One she had best have the answer to—for her own sake, if not for his. “Because frankly, I had rather not marry, Colonel Cathcart. I would rather pursue more serious intellectual studies and write books than be a wife. I am what some people call a bluestocking.”
“Books? You don’t say?” Cathcart’s amazed gaze dropped to her skirts. “Don’t know that I’ve ever seen a lady’s blue stockings,” he observed with some wonder.
Tamsin found herself both embarrassed and amused by his still-sunny befuddlement. “They are not, in actuality, blue, sir. The appellation is just a name—an expression to connote a person of intellectual interests.”
“You don’t say.” He was
smiling at her as if she had just explained all the secrets of the universe.
“I do say.” She gave him her own smile, for it seemed pointless, and rather rude, not to join in such happy affability, even if it was confusing. “Are we agreed?”
“To what?”
“To lightly ruining me. For appearances,” she clarified. “Under my instruction.”
“Under instruction—like being under orders. I reckon I can do that.” But then he closed his eyes and scratched his sandy head as if he were searching his brain. “Aha—the very thing.” His face grew rather blankly serious. “If I ruin you, then I’ll have to marry you.”
“No, no,” she hastened to assure him. “I have no want to marry. In fact, the reason I should like to be ruined is so I’m beyond the pale, and unmarriageable.”
“Right ho.” His brows rose and his face cleared. “Put some fellow off, is that the brief?”
“Yes, exactly.” Tamsin began to have some hopes for his intellect despite other appearances.
“Right ho!” The sunshine dawned in his face again. “Rather not get married myself, either. But parents and relations and the like—they have a deadly bad habit of insisting upon such things, don’t they?”
“Yes, I suppose they do. I take your point, Colonel. But I give you my word that I will not be forced into marrying you—my papa is away at sea and shall not bother us, so we shall only have my mama to contend with. And my plan for her is to arrange to leave your name out of it entirely.”
“Right ho. Well, that’s a relief.” His smile widened, if possible, until it reached all the way up to the corners of his eyes. Which were a rather lovely sort of green. Not that that mattered. “No need to saddle you with me, then, is there?”
“No.” Tamsin felt her own lips curving in response—it seemed impossible not to join in such easy joy. “Not that you’re not a perfectly agreeable sort of man, I’m sure.” And most perfectly, most agreeably handsome. “But as I said, I’ve no want to be trapped either, so I give you my word that should someone, somehow, someway, force you to propose, I shall refuse. Here is my hand on it.” She offered him her pledge.
He finally stood and took her hand, his big palm covering hers entirely.
The feeling—of relief, she supposed—was nearly overwhelming. Or perhaps that was him, bending over her, sheltering her like some tall tropical palm tree.
Lord help her, but he was a tall, well-favored man. “So you’ll do it?”
He smiled at her as if she had given him a gift. “I don’t see why not.”
Tamsin felt as giddy with hope as if she’d drunk an entire bottle full of French champagne.
Ask and you shall receive, the Bible always said, but Tamsin had never really believed it. Perhaps because she’d been asking the wrong people all that time.
Chapter 3
Simon Cathcart couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so completely surprised. Probably at Vitoria on the Peninsula when that retreating French officer’s cavalry saber had arced toward his head.
But ruination was a far pleasanter prospect than either the scar across his shoulder, or the bloody war that had begotten it. And he was bored out of his allegedly damaged skull.
So Simon raised himself up from his pose of idle relaxation on the plushly upholstered sofa, extended his hand in pledge and prepared to break all his hard held rules. Because ruining the delightfully serious Miss Tamsin Lesley was going to be fun. And Simon hadn’t had the kind of fun that involved young ladies in a long, long time.
Years of soldiering, of disciplining his body and mind, of simultaneously honing his instincts while curbing his impulses, had left him tangled in such knots that he no longer trusted himself. No longer trusted his ability to make the sort of decisions they prized in the Army. No longer wanted to.
And so he had become someone new—someone so simple and dull that Society could not conceive that he had ever served under Wellington or assisted his uncle, the Earl Cathcart, in the delicate diplomacy of negotiating peace at the Congress of Vienna. So simple, diamonds like Lady Evangeline and her friend thought him different.
He had heard it all before—their whispered assessment of him, people saying he’d lost his mind. And he had been horrified at first, angry and diminished. Until he realized how useful it was to be thought less—it gave him peace and quiet to think. It gave him a reason to prefer quiet to company, and library sofas to balls. A reason to listen instead of talk.
But the sofa had, of late, become tedious. He tired of playing the part of everyone’s favorite idiot. And it wasn’t every day a lass asked him ruin her.
Especially a lass who looked like a strange spun sugar confection of a governess. The bright glint of her spectacles against the clever spark in her eye added to her air of mischievous, myopic, fairy godmother. “I’m happy to oblige you, Miss—”
“Lesley,” she supplied politely, despite it being the fourth time he had very purposefully asked. “Tamsin, please.” She clasped his hand in the sort of nervously overconfident shake generals had given him when they had wanted difficult orders followed and impossible gains made—hopeful that he would be their man. “But only lightly ruined, you understand?” she queried again.
“I understand you perfectly, Miss T.” He stepped back and gave her a smart salute. “I’m just the fellow for the job.”
Relief transformed her face. If she had been a tolerably pretty lass before—all fey, elfin features that gave her that fairytale air—she was rather ravishing now, with a lovely warm, satisfied determination beaming from her face through the glinting lens of her spectacles. “Thank you, Colonel.”
“Simon, please. Don’t know who he is, Miss T, but serve him right,” he assured her. “We’ll rout him, and put him off, what? See if we don’t.”
Miss Lesley smiled slowly—the sort of genuine, honestly pleased smile that seemed so rare in Society, where most people hid their true emotions and intentions behind a false mask of pleasantness.
God knew he did.
“Oh, thank you. That’s lovely. Now, we’ll have to plan it out quite carefully.” She stepped closer to speak more confidentially. “Nothing left to chance.”
Up close, Miss Tamsin Lesley was even more delicious—all that doe-eyed, fey innocence masked a sharp determination.
For some reason he could not name, he liked her. He liked the bossy bundle of deliciousness who couldn’t see past her own nose, but assumed all the world beyond her gaze should be as she saw it. There was something hopeful about that assumption. Something reassuring. And reassuringly human.
She wanted to be the heroine of her own story.
In short, just his type. “I await your command.”
“Really?” She peered at him through those glossy spectacles with slightly narrowed eyes, as if she wanted to trust him, but feared he really was as thick as the wet bale of wool he pretended to be. “I’ve never met a man inclined to give rank to a mere woman before."
“Had entirely too much of being in charge, I assure you,” he said, because it was the truth. And because he was not nearly as thick as he so purposefully tried to appear. Nor too addled by his years of army service—and that French saber—to look a gift horse in the mouth. “Happy to be led to water, as the saying goes.” And to drink.
Especially from such rosy, charmingly bitten lips.
“You are the most remarkably accommodating man.” She said it with such wary wonder that he wanted to thank all the unaccommodating men who had disappointed her. They were idiots.
But their loss was his gain.
“When do you think you might become available to start?” she asked.
Simon felt his grin widen. “No time like the present, what?” He gestured to the sofa.
Miss Tamsin Lesley lost some of her governess-like assurance. “I hadn’t thought to begin straightaway.” She took an awkward step backward, and promptly smacked into a side table, sending the brandy he had settled there sloshing. “Perhaps we might
discuss the particulars first? Some place less…”—she glanced across the room where Henry Killam sat in his usual sentinel at the window, as well as at the two fellows reading by the fire—“…crowded.”
“Oh, I should think we’re safe enough here. Especially if a light ruination is all you want—should actually think Henry is the right person for the job of observant witness. Very scientific and observant, is Henry.”
“Oh, no, I shouldn’t ask that of a stranger.” Miss Lesley pushed her spectacles more firmly up her pert nose. “It will be my mother, and my mother only, whom I want to discover us in…some compromise.”
Some compromise. Simon was charmed. “In flagrante, as the French would have it, do you mean?”
“Yes, although the phrase is, I think, not French but from the Latin, in flagrante delicto—in the act of a blazing offense,” she corrected.
Simon could only smile—damned if he didn’t adore the clever ones. His childhood governess, the beautiful Miss B—Beatrice Bancroft—had a lot to answer for. “Let us blaze away. It’s all Greek to me, Miss T.”
“And that’s Shakespeare.” Her smile was only a temporary reward, because her now-keen gaze focused on his face in a way that made him suddenly less sure about having agreed to her proposition—she looked too clever not to find her way through his defensive charade.
Perhaps it was time he gave it up?
But not just yet. Simon gave her the happy lunatic smile he had perfected when he wanted people to leave him alone—even though the purpose was to be left alone with Miss Lesley. “How should you prefer to be compromised, Miss T? Kissed or cuddled or something more? Say the word and I shall do my best not to disappoint.”
“That’s very good in you, Colonel.” She pleated up her forehead in an adorably fierce look of deep thought. “I should think a sort of straightforward caress will do.”
“Ought to call me Simon, what? Under the circumstances.” The circumstance being that there was no such thing as a straightforward caress. Which also meant Miss Tamsin Lesley clearly did not have as much actual experience in ruination as she wanted him to believe. How interesting and amusing.
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