She caught the duke’s eye. He gave her a crooked smile as he leaned closer to Lady Clarice, who had declared the need to tell the duke something tremendously humorous that happened at the last Silchester assembly.
A footman began placing a setting to the left of Tess. She finished her plaice, listening to Lady Clarice prattle to Rafe of an agreeable interlude in which a dear, dear friend of hers had quite lost the anchoring on her bodice whilst in the midst of a crowded room, or so Tess understood. From Lady Clarice’s relish in repeating the episode, one grasped immediately the idea that the friend in question had neglected to put on sufficient undergarments.
Then the door opened again, and Brinkley ushered in Rafe’s new guest. It must be the champagne, Tess thought rather foggily, a second later.
The man who entered the room after Brinkley looked like a fallen angel. The candelabra on the table bounced light from his sleek hair, off his austere face, off the severe line of his nose. He was wearing a black coat with velvet lapels. He looked every inch a duke, every inch a patrician, a wealthy creature of privilege. And yet there was a sense in which he was like one of her father’s stallions: large, beautiful, a man who dominated the room merely by entering it. A man whose eyes showed a combination of restraint and a faint boredom, a sleek man.
A rather terrifying fallen angel, really.
Chapter
6
Lucius Felton was, like most men, enamored of habit. When he journeyed to the Duke of Holbrook’s house, as he did every June and September to attend the races at Ascot and Silchester, he expected to find the duke sprawled in a chair with a decanter at his elbow and a copy of Sporting News in the near vicinity.
Sometimes the Earl of Mayne joined them; either way the talk circled comfortably around horses and brandy. All tedious subjects such as women, financial affairs, and family were avoided, not from some trumped-up idea of secluding themselves from the world, but because those subjects were tedious. By their advanced age of thirty-some, women had proved to be (except in certain circumstances) fairly wearisome companions.
Money came to all three of them with supreme ease, and money is only interesting when it is in short supply. As for family…since his own had eschewed contact with him for years, Lucius viewed the turmoils of other people’s families with some, if lethargic, interest. But after Holbrook had lost his brother, they had stopped discussing family as well.
Thus when Lucius descended from his carriage at Holbrook Court, he viewed with some severity the butler, who conveyed to him the news that the duke had unexpectedly become guardian to the four nubile young daughters of Lord Brydone, and with even less pleasure did he receive the news that Lady Clarice Maitland and her devil’s spawn of a son were at the table. The presence of Mayne was the only mitigating light in this dismaying turn of events. Mayne must be planning to run his filly Plaisir in the Silchester Gold Plate, which would provide a good opportunity for Lucius to test the paces of his own Minuet, running in her first race.
But as Lucius pulled on a clean shirt in the chambers assigned to him (not, he noticed with disapproval, the room to which he was accustomed because that apparently had been given to one of the nubile young misses), he rather thought that he might skip the Silchester and leave his stable master and jockeys to do the job on their own. He had several sweet deals brewing in the city. And if the duke’s house was no longer a bastion of male comradeship and comfort—and the presence of females had undoubtedly changed it to something more starched-up and far less comfortable—he might as well abandon his intent to attend the race and return to London in the morning. Or at least to the estate he owned an hour or so from here. He hadn’t visited Bramble Hill in some four months.
His manservant Derwent bustled in the door, having obtained a bowl of shaving water from the kitchens. Derwent had taken this news even more poorly than had his master; the company of women was distasteful to Derwent at the best of times, and the presence of so many marriageable ladies in the house had thrown him into a flurry of acid comments.
“Apparently they haven’t a stitch to their backs,” he said, brushing up a warm froth of soap, preparatory to shaving Lucius’s face. “One can only guess at the endeavors the poor duke will have to go through to hoist four females onto the market, and none of them marriageable in the least.”
“Are they unattractive, then?” Lucius asked, gazing at the ceiling so that Derwent could shave his neck in a clean stroke.
“Well, Brinkley didn’t describe them as strictly unattractive,” Derwent said, “but they came with only one or two garments and those most repellent, if you can believe it. And Scottish, you know, without dowries. The accent is fatal on the market. The poor things would have to be very lucky to take.”
Derwent gazed anxiously at his master. One didn’t have to think hard to realize that the Duke of Holbrook would be desperate to bestow his wards on all and sundry…including his oldest friends.
Felton was lying back calmly, but Derwent had a sense of doom. Doom. His left eye was twitching, and that always signaled an unfortunate turn of events. His eye had twitched unmercifully the day that the Duke of York fell off his horse in the midst of a victory parade two years previous; and then there was July of last year when the master entangled himself with Lady Genevieve Mul-caster. Derwent had been unable to see to his left side for a month and was nearly struck down by a wagon and four horses on High Street.
“Finished?” his master asked, opening his heavy-lidded eyes.
Derwent jumped, horrified to find that his hand had paused in midair, thinking about the travails of marriage. Goddesses, that was how Brinkley had described Holbrook’s young wards. He sniffed. Goddess is as goddess does, and no woman could do well enough for the master. He patted Felton around the chin with a soft towel.
Lucius stood up and began tying a neckcloth in deft folds. “I’m considering skipping the Silchester races,” he told Derwent. “Under the circumstances.”
“Precisely!” Derwent agreed. “The circumstances will be difficult indeed for the poor Duke of Holbrook. We would do better to leave immediately. I shan’t unpack your bags, sir.”
Lucius threw him an amused look. “I’m not in the market for a wife,” he said gently. “I consider myself able to resist the charms of Rafe’s wards for a night or two.”
“I would never venture to comment,” Derwent said with an air of studied carelessness, as he helped Lucius shrug into an evening coat of superfine wool.
“Good,” Lucius said. But then he relented. “Still, I thought it kind to divert you from such wholly unpleasant and unnecessary thoughts, Derwent.”
“Very kind,” the valet said with dignity, opening the door. “Extremely so.”
“I am quite certain,” Lucius added, “that should I become ensnared in the parson’s mousetrap someday, it will not be due to the presence of a few inexperienced Scottish lasses left without friends and family and thrust on the kindness of poor Rafe.”
“Without a doubt, sir,” Derwent said. His left eye was twitching like murder.
His master peered at him. “Are you quite all right? Your eyebrow appears to be developing a life of its own.”
“Yes, sir. I am quite all right.” And Mr. Felton left, for all the world like a lamb to the slaughter.
Derwent went over to the mirror and picked up the silver bowl of spent shaving water. But his attention was caught by his own appearance in the glass. His eye was twitching something mortal; the price of being a sensitive soul, as his mother always said. But his mustache was so fine as to draw attention away from any particular element of his face. It swept out from his mouth and ended in an innovation all Derwent’s own: a waxed spade shape on either side.
Alas, Lucius Felton was resolutely conservative when it came to dress. No mustache. No facial hair whatsoever, as a matter of fact. The most he would allow his valet to do was to sleek his thick blond hair back from his face in a style that was most severe.
Derwent sighed. It
was his fate to be an artiste in the service of a man with no sense of fashion.
And now, possibly, Felton would take a wife. Wives meant the end of pleasant jaunts hither and yon, as the race season dictated. Domestic life! It was enough to drive a man to tears.
Lucius strolled after Brinkley into the dining room, hoping against hope that Rafe wouldn’t see fit to place him next to Lady Clarice. The very idea of Clarice Maitland made the hair stand on the back of his neck.
He found Rafe seated at the head of the table, looking much the same as usual. His neckcloth was tied in a careless knot, his hair stood straight up in the back, and there was a glass of brandy in his hand.
But the rest of the table—Lucius almost stopped flat in his tracks. Derwent had said Rafe’s wards were not unattractive? Not unattractive? A woman with hair of a deep golden color looked up and smiled at him…and the smile was enough to make him bolt the room. And there was a dark-haired, dark-eyed one, with the expression of a passionate saint, one of those early virgin martyr types whose face burns with emotion. He just caught himself from stepping backward.
“Lucius!” Rafe called, beckoning to him.
He walked over, calculating how soon he could leave. It was a good thing that Derwent did not plan to unpack his valises. The last place he wanted to be was amidst a nest of marriage-minded young ladies: he had enough of that on his rare appearances during the season. “I am very sorry to disrupt you, under the circumstances,” he told Rafe. “I would not have intruded.”
Now that he was closer, Rafe didn’t look precisely the same as usual. For one thing, he appeared to be sober, rather than jug-bitten. And for another, there was a faint but distinct look of panic in his eye. The man would never escape without marrying one of these women, although the poor old duffer was so slow on the uptake when it came to women that he had probably only just discovered that fact.
“I’m extremely pleased to see you,” Rafe said. There was no doubt he was sincere: of course, drowning men always hoped a friend would throw them a rope. Or, in this case, Lucius had to suppose a wedding ring would offer the desired salvation.
Rafe turned to the young woman seated to his left. “Miss Essex, may I present an old friend of mine, Mr. Felton?”
Miss Essex was presumably the eldest of Rafe’s four new wards. Lucius hadn’t seen her at first. She was not in the least like that sensual, glowing sister down the table, nor like the black-haired passionate one. Oh, she was beautiful: brandy brown hair, cheekbones that the harshest sunlight couldn’t diminish. But it was her eyes, tip-tilted at the edges, serious, intelligent, dark, and sweet in her gaze…
She was smiling at him, and he was standing like a lummox without speaking. He bowed. “Miss Essex.”
“How very nice to meet you,” she said, holding out a hand. The ruffle at her wrist had been darned; at least Derwent’s information about the girls’ lack of dowries was correct, even if his assessment of their marketability certainly was not.
“I am truly sorry to hear of your father’s death,” Lucius said. “I met Lord Brydone a time or two and found him a gallant and merry-hearted gentleman.”
To his horror, Miss Essex’s eyes took on a little glimmer. “We are—” She paused. “Papa was an excellent rider.”
“Lucius, do have a seat. Brinkley has laid a place next to Miss Essex,” Rafe said. “I shall introduce you to everyone else after the meal.”
“I shall take it quite amiss if you do not personally greet me before seating yourself,” Lady Clarice thrilled from the other side of the table. “Dear Mr. Felton, how are you?” She held out her hand with a positive smirk of greeting.
Lucius gritted his teeth and walked around the table, kissing a hand that was thrust in his face with arch command.
Sure enough, Lady Clarice launched into her favorite topic without waiting for breath. “I met your dearest mother at the Temple Stairs just the other evening,” she said, watching him like a hawk from behind her fluttering eyelashes. “We were both on our way to that production of All for Love everyone has been talking about. It was utterly lackluster, not that it signifies. But the poor woman, how Mrs. Felton has aged—so thin, so melancholy, so pale! Perhaps you have visited her recently?” Her voice trailed off suggestively, even though she knew perfectly well that hell would freeze over before he darkened his parents’ door.
Lucius bowed again, saying nothing. If his mother was pale, it must have been from an attack of distemper.
But the loathed Lady Clarice wasn’t done yet. She grabbed his hand and clung to it. “From what I hear, Mrs. Felton hardly leaves her bed. If only I could impress upon you the grief that assails a mother’s heart when her child strays from her side…the anguish is like no other!”
Lucius sharply withdrew his hand and bowed again, to make up for it. As he straightened, he caught Miss Essex’s eyes, across the table. She looked faintly surprised. Even though he’d long ago stopped caring much for his reputation amongst the ton, he felt a pulse of rage. Damned old hag, airing her ridiculous ideas about his family to the whole table.
“Lucius is rather old to be tied to his mother’s apron strings,” Rafe said, his normally lazy tones carrying a sting. If anything, Rafe loathed Lady Clarice more than Lucius did, since in the past year she had demonstrated a fixed determination to become the next Duchess of Holbrook, and nothing short of assault had dissuaded her of the notion.
“Tied to one’s apron strings—well, I should hope not! My own darling son is a man grown, and wouldn’t countenance my interference. But”—Lady Clarice reached for Lucius’s hand again, but he nimbly avoided her—“a mother needs to see her son occasionally, if only to revivify the wellsprings of her heart and being!”
Lucius opened his mouth to utter some commonplace, but Rafe nipped in. “Why, Maitland,” he said, looking down the table at Lady Clarice’s hell-raker of a son, “I had no idea that you were such a useful chap. Here you’ve been running about resuscitating your mother’s wellsprings when we all thought you were doing little more than following the races!”
Rafe’s comment was intolerably rude. It was intolerably drunken. It also gave Lucius time to retreat back around the other side of the table and sit down beside Miss Essex, revising his initial assessment of Rafe as sober: in fact, the man was utterly cast-away. Awkward, what with his wards at the table, but not unexpected.
One of Maitland’s qualities, however, was that he didn’t take offense quickly—a trait that had probably kept him alive during a lifetime crammed with well-earned insult. He merely laughed at Rafe’s jibe and returned to regaling the bottom of the table with a story about the horse called Blue Peter, whom he’d just won in a wager. “His hocks are just right, squarely set, beautiful knee, facing square. He’s young still, but he’ll take a good fifty starts for me, and win a number of those!” His eyes were shining. He leaned toward the black-haired sister, the only one showing any real interest in his tale, and said, “For tuppence, I’d race him this year, though he is a yearling. He never puts a foot wrong, flies along as sweet as a flea on a duck’s back.”
“What a charming analogy,” the blond sister put in. The sharp irony in her voice made Lucius raise an eyebrow: all that honeyed lushness hid an intelligent mind.
Maitland didn’t even spare her a glance, just kept his eyes on the passionate black-haired sister. “A yearling beat a three-year-old at Newmarket Houghton last spring.”
“At what weight?” the blond sister asked skeptically.
“Five stone,” Maitland said, finally turning to her.
The passionate black-haired missionary was nodding as if stars were circling Maitland’s head. In fact, it seemed to Lucius even after only a few seconds’ observation that Lord Maitland was the likely object of that sister’s particular religion. An odd choice at best, and one that would cause Rafe considerable trouble, if it went beyond calf-love.
“Charming,” the blond sister said. “I suppose I have never considered you in the role of an inn
ovator, Lord Maitland. I was under the impression that racing yearlings was not an accepted practice.”
Lucius swallowed a grin and turned back to Miss Essex, who was talking to Rafe. She was wearing one of the most awful garments he’d ever seen, a shapeless black thing that made her appear to have a gorgeous bosom—and a stomach exactly the same size. The dress went out below the collarbone and just forgot to go in again.
She had a slender white neck, though…and slender shoulders too: he could just see their outline through the dull fabric. And from what he could see, her bosom appeared to be real, although the stomach was just an illusion. Under that black cape of a dress, she was—
She turned from Rafe and caught him looking. Her eyes flared. “I gather you are particularly close to your mother?” she asked sweetly.
A faint smile curled Rafe’s mouth. An English miss would never broach such a topic with him, not even in a fit of pique. He was far too big a fish to risk offending; all he’d had from young ladies for years were buttery smiles. “Alas, my mother and I have not spoken these nine years,” he said. “That circumstance makes our closeness debatable.”
Miss Essex drank the rest of her champagne. “I would venture to say that you are in error,” she said, in a conversational tone. “My parents are both gone, and I would give much for a chance to speak to either of them—just one time.”
Her voice didn’t shake, but Lucius felt a pang of acute alarm. “Ah, but it would be different if we shared mothers,” he said quickly.
“Why so?”
“’Tis my mother that chooses not to speak with me,” he said, and wondered at himself. Most of the ton, Lady Clarice amongst them, believed the shunning went the other direction. It must be something to do with Miss Essex’s dark eyes. They gazed at him with such curiosity that it was hard not to answer, even though he routinely avoided questions about his parents with dexterous efficiency.