Plague take Eliot, what he did would only fan gossip about his intentions toward Verena. Respectable intentions at that. He may as well shout another proposal from Mayfair’s rooftops.
Part of her – the untamed, reckless, selfish part – almost admired his effrontery. His daring as a lover had taken her by surprise and enchanted her too fast for her to raise her usual defenses. But throughout their affair, he’d played the sensible, practical fellow in public. This unfamiliar, dangerous version of Eliot thrilled her to the bone.
But that didn’t mean that she approved of him throwing away his future by making this overt claim on her. He was in the grip of spring fever, but when he recovered his senses, he’d kick himself for this outlandish behavior. Especially as he’d find himself without either sterling reputation or lady. She’d sworn that she’d never marry again, and she meant it.
“Lady Verena. Lord Shelburn,” Eliot said, sweeping his hat from his head with a grace that sent a ripple of unwilling awareness down Verena’s spine. “The park is busy this afternoon. The fine weather must have brought everyone out to enjoy the sun.”
Highly likely. So far, it had been a dank, cold spring.
“No doubt,” Shelburn said. To Verena’s regret, his eyes gleamed with more of that pestilential curiosity that she’d tried so hard to quash.
“Lady Verena, may I present my sister, Lady Imogen Ridley, who is enjoying her first season in London?”
What could she say? “I’d be delighted to make her acquaintance.”
“Imogen, this is Lady Verena Gerard, who is one of society’s brightest ornaments.”
Imogen looked surprised at that description. So was Verena. Eliot was known as a plain speaker. She just had to recall that desperate, roughly expressed proposal to remember that. Although she never liked to recall his proposal. The memory always made her stomach clench in anguish.
“Good afternoon, Lady Imogen,” Verena said with a smile. “I hope you’re enjoying your time in London.”
Up close, the girl was exquisite. Shining raven hair, neat features, white skin and large blue eyes alight with intelligence. Verena wasn’t surprised to hear that Lady Imogen had ensnared one of the ton’s most elusive catches. She’d make a spectacular countess.
“Good afternoon, Lady Verena. Good afternoon, Lord Shelburn.” Imogen responded with a politeness that in no way reflected the searching stare she leveled on Verena. “Thank you for asking, my lady. It’s all been so exciting. Not at all like Gloucestershire.”
“I’m sure,” Verena said, liking that Imogen made no pretense to a sophistication that she was too young to own. “I hear you’ve just come back from Buckinghamshire.”
“That was exciting, too. Lord Halston was a wonderful host, and Prestwick Place is quite magnificent. Do you know it?”
Verena examined the girl’s face for some sign of smugness because she’d captured the rake, but all she saw was open enthusiasm. No blushes. No bashful fluttering of the eyelashes.
Interesting. Could it be that the rake was beguiled, but the innocent wasn’t? If Halston proposed and Imogen refused him, that would put the cat among the pigeons.
Then she recalled Lord Deerforth, and a sick feeling settled in her midriff. She hadn’t wanted to marry George, but a parent was in a position to compel consent.
“Yes, I’ve been there several times. The grounds are glorious.”
Eagerness lit Imogen’s eyes, and Verena recalled Eliot saying that his sister had an interest in garden design.
Eliot had observed Verena’s proper interactions with his sister with an approval that in no way made her forget that he was being very improper indeed. Verena Gerard wasn’t a suitable companion for a fresh-faced girl just out of the schoolroom. They both knew that.
Now his laugh was almost a groan. “Don’t mention the grounds, my lady. Imogen has been waxing lyrical about terracing and water features since she came back to Town yesterday. If she gets started now, we’ll be here until next week.”
Imogen cast her brother a teasing looked that combined censure and fondness. Verena couldn’t help approving of the unconcealed affection between the two siblings. She’d always suspected Eliot was a good brother. Now she knew he was.
Or he had been, until his headlong descent into scandal.
“I’m sure you exaggerate,” Verena said.
Imogen rolled her eyes. The gesture was charming in its naturalness. In general, debutantes were rather a dull lot, too conscious of making a good impression. But Imogen sparkled. The match with Lord Halston seemed more feasible with every minute.
“I’m sure he doesn’t, my lady,” Imogen said.
Shelburn laughed. “Talking about gardens would make a nice change. The last debutante I danced with entertained me with a long discussion about lace on bonnets.”
“I hope we can discuss Prestwick Place on some other occasion. I see Lady Edgecombe over there, and I have something particular to say to her.” Verena slid her fingers around Shelburn’s arm in a deliberate gesture that she meant Eliot to notice.
While he appeared relaxed, she sensed his alertness. He bristled like a guard dog ready to snarl at the slightest provocation. She supposed he was seeking some sign that he returned to favor. That telltale muscle flickered in his cheek, and the grays shifted in harness, as if the pressure changed on the reins.
Eliot bowed. “I’ll see you tonight at the Pollock ball. Perhaps you’ll keep me a waltz.”
Shelburn’s arm twitched under Verena’s hand, as she struggled to summon an answer to his effrontery. “I’m sorry. I’m otherwise engaged this evening, my lord,” she said, silently cursing him. He must know that he created trouble with no hope of reward.
It seemed that a night at home loomed ahead. The sad fact was that the prospect almost sounded appealing. At least it meant that she wouldn’t be on edge about Eliot’s next move.
“What a pity,” he said easily, while his eyes told her that none of this was easy at all. “Some other time?”
“Perhaps,” she said through tight lips. “A pleasure to see you, Lady Imogen. Shelburn, we should go. Lady Edgecombe never stops long in the park.” Plump Celia Edgecombe would rather recline on a well-padded sofa with a box of bonbons and the latest Minerva Press novel than do anything that smacked of exercise.
After polite farewells, Eliot urged the grays to a trot and his carriage rolled away. Verena sucked in her first full breath in twenty minutes, forgetting for a moment that Shelburn sat close enough to notice her reaction. She waited for some pointed comment on that meeting with Eliot and her reaction to it. But he remained silent as he turned his attention to his horses.
That was the most worrying thing of all.
Chapter 8
As was inevitable, Eliot’s father ordered him into his presence three days later. He was surprised that the earl had taken so long to react. He’d expected a report of his encounter with Verena in the park to reach his parent’s ear within the hour. The Pater was getting slow in his old age.
Eliot strolled through a beautiful spring afternoon to Lorimer Square, where his father had rented an opulent house for Imogen’s season. The weight in his gut was familiar from childhood, although at least today his father was unlikely to beat him for his sins, the way he had when Eliot was a boy. It always struck him as odd that while he’d long ago lost any respect for his father and thanks to a godmother’s generosity, he no longer relied on the old man for money, the words, “Your father wishes to see you,” still turned his blood to ice.
Brent the butler opened the door and took his hat. “You’ve got his lordship in a right spin, Mr. Eliot. Everyone downstairs has been walking on eggshells the last day or so. He knocked one of the maids down this morning, because she made too much noise putting fresh eggs on the breakfast table.”
Brent and he were old friends. As a child at Hamble Park, Eliot had often run to the servants for comfort after his father’s temper had left him bruised and bewildered, and wondering w
hy he always did something wrong when he tried so hard to do right. While it might be many years since Brent and his wife, the housekeeper, had mopped up blood and tears after an encounter with his enraged sire, the fondness remained.
“Send the girl to Trentham Hall, if she wants to leave my father’s employ. I’m sure Mrs. Oates can find a place for her.” A fair proportion of the staff at his country estate were refugees from his father’s violence.
“Thank you. She’s a good lass.” He and Brent shared a steady look that spoke of years of cleaning up the results of his father’s anger. Several times, Eliot had asked Brent to work for him in Wiltshire, but the man came from a long line who had served the Earls of Deerforth. And as he said, he needed a more challenging role than running a house that Eliot seldom visited. Challenging certainly described Lord Deerforth’s household.
“Is he in the library?”
“Yes.”
“And where are Imogen and Stella?”
“Lady Imogen and Miss Stella are paying calls this afternoon, I believe.”
“Let’s hope that he’s cooled down by the time they come back,” Eliot said without much optimism.
Over recent years, his father’s resentment of Eliot’s growing independence had only deepened. Their rare encounters grew ever more acrimonious. Today’s promised to raise the roof, so he was glad his sister and his cousin were out of the house.
“Indeed, Mr. Eliot,” Brent said, and Eliot’s heart sank further as he heard an equal lack of conviction in Brent’s voice.
“Don’t show me through. I can make my own way to him.” He’d make his own way in any case, but that didn’t mean he looked forward to the histrionics to come.
While he’d kept his rooms at the Albany during his family’s stay in London – he only lived under his father’s roof when he couldn’t avoid it – he knew his way around the house from his visits to Imogen. The library was on the ground floor at the back, overlooking the generous garden. All these houses on Lorimer Square occupied what were, in London terms, large plots of land.
He walked along the corridor and knocked on the closed door at the end.
“Come,” his father barked from inside.
With grim fatalism, Eliot opened the door and stepped into the library. “Good afternoon, Father.”
With difficulty, Lord Deerforth rose from behind the large desk and glared at his only son. As a younger man, he’d been handsome, but years of bad temper and self-indulgence had taken their toll. There was a portrait of a young Deerforth at Hamble Park that could have been a picture of Eliot. But little of that angelic, golden-haired gentleman remained now.
The earl was still tall, but time had added stones to his weight and the chiseled features had coarsened and settled into a permanent peevishness. The golden hair had turned gray and sparse, and the pale eyes were sunk in pouches of fat. He looked what he was – a selfish brute with no tolerance for anything but his own desires and opinions.
Eliot couldn’t remember ever loving his father, but as an adult, he’d come to hate him. If he hadn’t been so fond of Imogen and if he hadn’t owed a duty to the family name, he’d have broken off relations long ago.
“Well may you call me father when I’m ashamed to call you son.”
Eliot bit back a sigh. He already saw that this was going to turn out to be one of his father’s more self-righteous tirades. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said with the deliberate calmness that he always cultivated with his sire. It drove Deerforth demented when his temper raised no reaction. Eliot had started it to annoy his father, but these days, he was calm because mostly he just didn’t care.
“Sorry? Sorry? Sorry?” Deerforth repeated on a rising note. “You should be on your knees and begging my pardon, you brainless fool.”
Eliot arched his eyebrows and spoke even more coolly. “Is that so?”
His father hadn’t invited him to sit down. These days, Eliot didn’t seem to be a welcome visitor wherever he went.
“Don’t pretend that you don’t know why I called you here.” His father lumbered out from behind the desk. His bulk and height always conveyed a threatening air, although Eliot was now two inches taller and his days of cowering beneath his father’s overpowering anger were long past. “Not even you could be as stupid as that.”
Eliot’s supposed lack of intelligence was an old insult, and one that had long ago lost its sting. He rested his weight on one hip and folded his arms with an appearance of casual interest. “I assume you’ve heard of my pursuit of Lady Verena Gerard.”
His father growled and stepped close enough to breathe into Eliot’s face. This time, only the strongest willpower kept Eliot where he was. The reek of stale tobacco smoke and brandy would topple a weaker man. “You dare to speak that whore’s name in this house?”
Eliot met his father’s glittering eyes. His voice emerged edged with icicles. “You will not insult the lady in my presence, sir.”
His father snarled. “She’s no lady. Her name is infamous throughout the land. And you had the temerity – the madness – to introduce this harlot to your innocent sister? What the devil were you thinking, you idiot? When I heard the tale, I didn’t believe it. By God, you’ve always been a disappointment, but that you should show such profligate disregard for the most basic rules of propriety leaves me speechless.”
Unfortunately that was far from the truth. If only it was. “Lady Verena is a duke’s daughter, and she’s accepted everywhere. I’m proud to call her my friend.”
His father went an alarming shade of crimson and puffed up with such fury that Eliot feared for the old boy’s health. “Proud? The woman is a living example of vice and degradation. You will wait in this house and apologize to Imogen for exposing her to such contagion. Then you will break off all connection with this shameless harpy.”
Eliot found it in him to smile. It was either that or punch his father in the jaw. “I’m afraid that’s impossible, sir. I intend to make Lady Verena my wife.”
His father’s color flared even higher, and he staggered back to seize the mantelpiece in a shaking hand. “You…”
For once, Eliot had succeeded in silencing his father, but there was no satisfaction in it. The earl looked like he was about to suffer an apoplexy.
Eliot filled a glass from the decanter of brandy on the desk and extended it toward the gasping man. “Father, drink this.”
“Sod off, you swine,” the earl said with an uncontrolled gesture that caught Eliot’s hand. The glass flew out of his hold and shattered on the fireplace surrounds. “I don’t need your pity. I’m all right. Or I would be, if I had a son who hadn’t lost his mind. What the devil insanity is this? If you want the wench, go ahead and fuck her. A thousand other men have.”
Eliot’s eyes narrowed on this ranting hypocrite, familiar to every brothel in London. “If you were one ounce fitter, I’d beat you to a pulp,” he said through lips that felt like they were made of wood. “As it is, I bid you good afternoon. I’ll inform you when I’ve gained Lady Verena’s consent.”
His father gulped in a mouthful of air and straightened, although his hand still gripped the edge of the mantel so hard that the knuckles shone white in his fat fingers. “So you haven’t asked her yet?”
Eliot paused in the act of walking out and faced his father. “Yes, I have.”
Then he wished to blazes that he hadn’t admitted that. It gave his father the advantage.
“But she hasn’t given you an answer.” His father studied him with the contempt that he was used to. “Wait, she did answer. But she said no, didn’t she?”
The problem with his father – one of the many problems with his father – was that while he might be a loathsome individual, he possessed a razor-sharp mind. What Eliot would give right now to present his marriage to Verena as a fait accompli. “I hope to persuade her of the advantages of the match.”
Deerforth broke into a delighted cackle and started to look a little better to Eliot’s relief. “Bug
ger me if I don’t almost admire the wench. She knows she’s no fit wife for you. She knows she’s no fit match for any man. At least old Horsham taught her that much, and she’s no fool, even if she’s got the morals of an alley cat. I wish my son had half her brains.”
“As I said, I’ve proposed and I intend to press my suit,” Eliot said in a flat voice, one hand closing into a fist at his side. How he itched to smash that crowing leer from his father’s face. Maybe if the man was ten years younger and ten stone lighter, he might have done it.
“She won’t say yes. Whatever else she is, she’s a woman who knows what society will accept.”
“I believe you’re wrong.”
His father must have felt on firmer ground because he took an unsteady step toward Eliot. He made a visible effort to sound calmer. At last, he gestured Eliot toward a chair. An invitation he ignored.
“Come, lad. Put this insanity behind you. If you persist in associating with this woman, you’ll lose any chance of making your mark in parliament. They’re talking of you as a future prime minister. You’ve got a brilliant career ahead. You can place your stamp on the country. Don’t you want that? Don’t you want to make your old dad proud?”
What Eliot wanted was a chance to shove his old dad’s teeth down his throat. He reminded himself again that he, more than anyone, knew violence solved nothing. Enjoyable as clouting the earl might prove.
“No, I don’t.” He didn’t point out that his father wasn’t talking about him as too stupid for his own good anymore. His father had never been one to let logic lose him an argument. “The only thing I want is to be Lady Verena Gerard’s husband. That would indeed be an achievement worth boasting about.”
His father jerked as if Eliot had struck him, and the temper stirred again. “Then to hell with you. I can’t stop you. You’re of age, more’s the pity. It makes me sick to the stomach that I can’t bar you from the succession. You’re not fit to hold the Deerforth title.”
Two Secret Sins Page 8
