He glanced away at the nymph. “Because I do keep kissing you, it seems. If I keep it up, people will begin to talk.”
“I have no intention of allowing you to keep it up,” was the indignant answer.
“What about Browdie? You may have called his bluff this time, but surely you don’t trust him to keep his tongue in his head.”
“I see. You want to marry me to protect my honour. I think you are having an attack of noblesse oblige.”
He rose abruptly. “I wasn’t brought up by wolves, if that’s what you mean,” he snapped. “I have got some honour, some sense of what’s right. If you weren’t so stubborn, you’d admit it’s right. If it weren’t you, but another woman in your predicament, wouldn’t you advise her to marry me?”
Catherine stood up as well. Shivering, she drew her shawl more tightly about her. “That would depend upon the woman. There is some risk that Lord Browdie will repeat the tale and ruin me, but that’s his gamble, as I told him. Shall you and I gamble on marriage, My Lord? Considering how ill we suit, are the stakes not excessive? Should we hazard a lifetime of wretchedness simply because there’s a small chance Lord Browdie will be foolish enough to reveal my secret? If this were a card game would you risk your entire future upon it?”
“I’ve risked that most of my life,” Max answered, his face darkening. “But we’re not talking about me, are we? It’s you. You’re afraid of me, aren’t you?”
Catherine had given her troubling feelings about him many names, but fear was not one of them. Now she realised he was right. She had met him only a month ago, yet he’d changed her. Every moment spent with him released demons. Lord, how many had escaped today? Her horrid temper. Those blustering denials and threats—she who abhorred falsehood had uttered lie upon lie.
Worst of all was the passion. He had touched her and she succumbed instantly. Even when she was away from him, he tormented her. Wicked dreams, harking back to that night at Granny Grendle’s, recollections of a strong, beautiful physique, shirtless—and she in a whore’s negligee.
It was the lust—there was no pleasanter name for it— she feared most of all. He had sensed it, as he sensed every other flaw, and would use the power it gave him over her, just as he used her other weaknesses. If not for that, she might have risked marriage, been happy to abandon her fears for her reputation, and devote her energies instead to helping him overcome his own frailties. She could never reform him altogether, and perhaps she didn’t quite want that. But these were naive fantasies. She could never change him, because he could master her with the merest glance, the lightest touch.
She saw all this in an instant and answered quickly, “If you mean I am afraid of spending the rest of my life as I have the beginning, you’re right.”
“I ain’t your father, damn it!”
“At the moment the resemblance is quite strong. He too bullies when he is contradicted.”
“I’m not bullying you!” he shouted.
“How unfortunate you have not a bottle or a mug handy,” said Miss Pelliston as she moved towards the entrance. “Then you might throw it at me, and the resemblance would be complete.” With that, she left him.
To Catherine’s relief, no one remarked her overlong absence. Lady Andover had been preoccupied with casting up her accounts and the members of her family had devoted all their anxiety to her.
When Catherine returned, therefore, she heard no awkward questions, only the brief announcement that they would be leaving as soon as the carriage was brought round. She might remain if she wished—Lady Glencove had offered to chaperone her—but Catherine had no desire to stay. At home she might look after Lady Andover, and that would help keep her miserable thoughts at bay.
If Lord Rand had any troubles of his own, he must have vanquished them after a very brief battle, because he left the grotto shortly after Miss Pelliston did, though taking a different path, and went in search of Lady Diana. When he found that goddess he was all affable gallantry and devoted so much time to her that Lady Glencove spent the next twenty-four hours in a state of paradisiacal bliss.
Gentlemen cope with rejection in different ways.
Lord Rand had all the resiliency of young manhood. After being spurned for the second time by Miss Pelliston, he decided he could take a hint and would go where he was more welcome.
Lord Browdie was not so resilient. When confronted with failure, he produced no creative alternatives. He fell into a sullen fit and his mind scraped back and forth upon the same narrow path until he wore the way so deep he could not see beyond it.
He also left the party early, in a bitter rage, vowing inwardly to publish his tale far and wide. He could not commence that publication at the Ventcoeur party because Lord Rand was too much in evidence. The fellow had already turned up once at an inconvenient moment and might get into the habit. Lord Browdie’s was not an enquiring mind. He was not eager to relive the experience of having his nose broken.
The return trip took an hour and a half, and he sulked the whole way. In the course of this exercise he experienced some doubts, one of which loomed increasingly larger the closer he got to Town. By the time he reached his love nest, the doubt had swelled to huge proportions. The little shrew had insisted she’d never been in that brothel. One would expect denials from the average lady. The trouble was, this was Catherine Pelliston, and one of her least agreeable traits was her appalling honesty.
London Society may have changed her—it changed everyone—and certainly she looked different. If she hadn’t changed, though, and he started an ugly rumour that proved to be unfounded, he’d have Pelliston, Andover, Rand—and Lord only knew who else—all fighting for the privilege of putting a sword or a bullet through his heart.
There was only one way to get the truth. Accordingly, Lord Browdie had his horse stabled, then made his way by hackney to a less prosperous neighbourhood.
Fortune must have been smiling on him that day because as he was approaching the brothel he met up with Cholly, and thus avoided a far more costly confrontation with Granny herself.
A pint of gin and a single gold coin made the taciturn Cholly talkative. That is to say, he described the “country servant” in question as having great “rum ogles” of a sort of yellowish-greenish-brownish color and a rat’s nest of curly hair. The girl, who had disembarked from the Bath coach, was rather small and very skinny—which Cholly had pointed out to Granny. She’d answered that the girl looked like a child, which was what plenty of the gentlemen wanted, because they believed that children wouldn’t give them the pox.
“Then why, I ax you,” Cholly went on in aggrieved tones, “does the old witch give her to him first, when she knows he likes the jolly big ones and not no babies? I knowed there was goin’ to be trouble as soon as she done it, but she don’t listen to me—and whose nose gets broke? Not hers.”
He glared at his glass. “Not as it ain’t been broke afore, but that was in a good row of my own. This were all on account of that old witch thinks she’s so sharp. I seed it comin’—but it’s wot she pays me for. That cove,” he added in mingled resentment and admiration, “got a fist like a millstone.”
Lord Browdie was not a man of many ideas, but hunger for revenge, like love, works miracles. He had something like an idea, and if he worked on it—and had some help— he might end up with a real one.
“How’d you like to get even, Cholly, without so much as going near the fellow? How’d you like that, and getting yourself a nice pile of those shiners besides?” He nodded at the coin that lay between them on the rough table.
Cholly expressed the opinion that he might contrive a liking for such matters, if properly persuaded.
Chapter Seventeen
Lord Rand had survived neither his numerous youthful escapades nor his adult ones through sheer luck. His instincts were finely tuned. He knew the exact odds of his surviving any given danger because he knew how much trouble he could handle.
He could, for instance, hold his own against
two great, hulking brutes determined to tear him limb from limb, as he had at Granny Grendle’s. He knew the odds in his favour when a harlot pointed a gun at his head. He knew, therefore, that with Catherine Pelliston he hadn’t a prayer.
He’d been upleasantly surprised by the depth of his dismay when she’d rejected his proposal again. He’d thought he was offering for exactly the reasons she’d cited. Now he realised there was more, that in spite of her being everything he thought he didn’t want in a woman, he was very fond of her, and fascinated, and possibly—contrary or demented or whatever it was—well, very possibly he was rather in love with her, drat it.
Still, that didn’t mean it wasn’t a mistake or that marrying her wouldn’t be a grievous error. She was right, of course: they didn’t suit and one or both of them would be wretched. Besides, she didn’t want him. To her he was a younger version of her papa, and she was afraid of him and despised him and that settled matters, didn’t it?
Lord Rand was not one to mope. Life was filled with disappointments. He picked up his battered—but not really broken, he told himself—heart, dusted it off, and decided he might as well drop it upon the goddess’s altar.
For nearly a week after the Ventcoeur party, the viscount kept clear of Miss Pelliston. If they happened to attend the same events—and that was unavoidable—he reduced their interactions to the minimum courtesy required. He stopped dancing with her and danced attendance upon Lady Diana instead.
He would have preferred to keep away from Almack’s as well, but he couldn’t, because he’d promised to help Jack. Besides, the goddess would be present. Accordingly, the viscount made his way to the sanctum sanctorum of snobs, that stuffiest and stupidest of places.
He arrived at Almack’s earlier than he would have normally because he had to find Catherine a suitable waltz partner—as he’d promised Jack a week ago—and needed time to investigate prospective victims. Why his sister was incapable of managing so simple a matter was a question that did not occur to him.
His sister herself did not occur to him even when she was standing in front of him, offering an unsolicited opinion of his new neckcloth arrangement, an original creation of Blackwood’s. All Max saw at that point was Miss Pelliston in a white muslin gown. There was nothing remarkable in that, certainly. White muslin was the usual debutante costume. She might be a bit older than the others, but the simple innocence of her frock complemented her delicate features.
Brunettes there were aplenty at Almack’s that night, as well as blondes and one unfortunate redhead, but there was no one in the cramped assembly rooms whose carefully groomed coiffure was such a tantalising froth, a light brown faery cloud flecked with golden light where the candles’ glow caught it.
From her hair his gaze dropped to her great hazel eyes, gleaming now with the militant light that always seemed to blaze up the instant she spotted him. Thence his scrutiny proceeded to a pair of soft pink lips. He remembered how sweet they were, while his survey continued, trancelike, down the silken whiteness of her neck. It was then he realised that her neckline was cut more daringly than any she’d worn before; simultaneously he became aware of the fragrance of violets and his head began to spin. He panicked.
He mumbled some answer—he hardly knew what—to her cool greeting, then fled as quickly as he could ... and walked straight into Sally Jersey’s arms, in a manner of speaking, because he nearly knocked that lady down in his blind haste to escape.
Regardless of Jack Langdon’s characterisation of Lady Jersey as one of several Almack Gorgons, she was an attractive matron, many years from her dotage, and not at all averse to having a handsome young lord fall on top of her. She offered Max an indulgent smile and waved away his apologies.
“Oh, I know what you’re about,” said she. “I saw you looking at Miss Pelliston and I expect you want to waltz with her. Well, come along, and I’ll do the honours. It’s either you or Argoyne, I suppose, though Langdon wants the same thing, but I’ll see him turn to stone first, since he tells everyone I can do it, and Argoyne is such a clumsy idiot he’ll trample her toes and put her off waltzing forever.”
Silence Jersey had more to say on this and other subjects as she led the hapless viscount inexorably back to the peril he’d just escaped. Then the chatter ceased. Lady Jersey resumed her patroness’s dignity and presented Miss Pelliston with her waltz partner.
After that there was nothing to be done because the music had started. Max led Miss Pelliston out, placed his arm about her waist, and promptly lost his mind.
The waltz, like Lord Bryon, had become all the rage the previous year and was still considered by Society’s more conservative element as fast at best and lewd at worst, which is more or less what these persons thought of the poet.
For the first time in his life Max wished that older and wiser heads had prevailed, and that the curst dance had been banished to benighted Germany, which had spawned it. To hold Miss Pelliston in any way was to wish to hold her closer. That was humiliating. He gazed longingly over his partner’s head at the blonde Juno, who was whirling about the dance floor with a tall military gentleman.
Lord Rand looked down at Catherine. He noticed that her head came to his breast and immediately he felt a dull ache there.
“I wish you would say something,” Miss Pelliston complained. “I’m still inept at small talk, but if you would help get me started, I might manage something.”
“If you get me started, you’ll be sorry. You usually are.”
“Nonetheless, I shall keep a brave smile on my face, so long as we appear to be holding a conversation. At present you are wearing what your sister calls your ‘caged animal’ look and everyone will think I am a thoroughly disagreeable partner.”
If he did feel like a trapped beast, Eton and Oxford quickly came to his rescue. “Oh, you’re not disagreeable at all. Tonight, in your maidenly white, with that pink in your cheeks, you put me in mind of apple blossoms. You’re as light in my arms as so many flower petals and your voice—”
“Oh, dear,” she murmured.
“The sound of your voice,” he went on, determined to make her as unsettled as he was, “is a breeze ruffling the leaves.”
“What on earth am I to say to that?” she asked, rather breathlessly, because she was at the same time recovering from a turn that had brought her up against his hard chest. Between that and the warm gloved hand which seemed to burn all the way up her spine, Catherine felt rather like a stack of very dry kindling. These circumstances as much as his words set her cheeks aflame and made her wish fervently that she were in St. Petersburg in the dead of winter.
“Really, Cat, must I tell you everything? Haven’t you told me repeatedly that you have no further need of my assistance?”
“Yes, I have—and you are still there. Everywhere I go, there you are.”
This was monstrous unfair—he’d kept away from her for ages, it seemed—but he chose to agree.
“Like a bad penny.”
“Very like,” she concurred.
How tiny her waist was. He could easily span it with his two hands, he was sure.
Aloud he said, “Actually, I’m here tonight as a favour to Jack. He’d much rather have the first waltz with you. Unfortunately he’s antagonised all the great ladies, so he has to wait for the next one.” Max briefly outlined Mr. Langdon’s difficulties with the patronesses.
“I see,” she said in a subdued voice.
“I hope you’re not disappointed.”
“Why should I be?” she answered a tad too quickly.
“I mean, that it’s me instead of Jack.”
“Well, My Lord, if you’ll leave off about apple blossoms and talk of Aristophanes instead, I might more easily pretend you are Mr. Langdon.”
She had recovered sufficiently to score a hit, but Lord Rand was not one to yield at the first blow.
“I wish you’d call me Max,” he said, deciding distraction was the best tactic. “‘My lord’ always makes me feel I should be
in armour, clanking about and trodding on helpless peasants. Most disconcerting when a chap’s trying to be graceful.”
“I most certainly cannot. That is disrespectful and far too intimate.”
“If you call me Clarence Arthur Maximilian, I’ll shoot you.”
He heard a faint tinkling sound: Miss Pestilence was giggling!
Though she quickly squelched the giggle, she could not suppress the smile as she gazed up at him. “Clarence Arthur? No wonder you prefer Max.”
“Just so.” He answered the smile, despite the sudden, inexplicable thundering in his ears. “Now you’ve said it, I feel warm and friendly and very light on my feet.”
“I wish you did not feel quite so friendly. I believe we are supposed to be twelve inches apart. Not”—she glanced down briefly—”five.”
Lord St. Denys stood listening to his daughter talk, but his eyes were upon the dance floor, and, in particular, upon his son. When Louisa chided him for not attending, he smiled. “Remember the half-drowned kitten Max brought home that day? He dropped it at your feet and told you to nurse it back to life.”
“I remember. The kitten. A robin. A bat. I spent my childhood nursing a menagerie.”
“I was thinking how that tiny creature terrified my great mastiff out of its wits. I could not understand it then and I cannot now.”
Lady Andover followed her father’s gaze. “If it’s any comfort, Papa, I’m sure he doesn’t understand, either.”
“Of course he doesn’t,” the earl snapped. “The boy’s a fool.”
By the time the waltz was over and Max had relinquished his partner to Lord Argoyne, the viscount was beside himself. How dare she be so cool and proper when she made him so heated? How dare she giggle and act human for once and set off all those warm, cosy sensations and weaken his already beleaguered resistance even further?
He had weakened, he knew. For one chilling moment he would have promised anything—complete reform, a transformation into a stodgy pillar of Society, not a drop of liquor again as long as he lived, not another tavern wench—anything, if she would give him her hand and allow him to make love to her all the rest of his life.