Duke of Scandal (Moonlight Square, Book 1) (12 page)

And no wonder. What a grand triumph it would be for a woman of her ilk, what a rose at her feet, to upbraid the Duke of Netherford in front of Society and then bring him to heel again as her keeper.

Love was all just a game to such people, just a sport, Felicity thought as she went into the hallway. It was rather sad.

Not that someone like Jason would know any better. His parents had been the exact same way, married by arrangement in their youth, with nothing in common except their ever-growing disdain for each other. She had seen it for herself. Neither duke nor duchess could seem to stand to be in the same house together, so they had each fled to their own pursuits, leaving their son a bit of a lost boy to be raised by well-paid servants. And now here he was.

In truth, how could he be otherwise?

Deep down, she had always wondered if Jason had any idea at all what love even
was
.

When she came upon her butler, she sent him to tell Mrs. Brown that His Grace had arrived to take them on their outing and it was time to go. Upon returning to the parlor, she found that Jason had risen from his seat and was sauntering idly across the room. “What’s with all the flowers?”

“Oh…” She blushed. “A few of the gentlemen I met last night sent them.”

He arched a brow at her. “Indeed?” He leaned toward the nearest bouquet and read the name on the card. “I told you that you caused a sensation, didn’t I? It’s like a garden in here.”

She smiled, feeling shy about her sudden popularity. “Invitations have been showing up, too.”

“I’ll bet,” he murmured as he furrowed his brow and went to read the rest of the cards, as though making a mental note of all the senders.

She took one off the silver mail tray where the butler had left it. “This one’s for the ever-coveted subscription ball at the Grand Albion Assembly Rooms two Thursdays from now. Mrs. Brown knows the patronesses, and they’ve been thoughtful enough to send us a voucher. Will you be going?” she asked hopefully. “You live right there.”

He looked over in distraction as she brought him the sumptuous, engraved summons that had arrived earlier that afternoon. “I’ll even be done with my half-mourning by then. You don’t think six weeks seems too short for a great-aunt who leaves you a fortune, do you?”

“No,” he said absently as he unfolded it and skimmed the invitation.

“Mrs. Brown and I debated it at length, and asked many of her friends what they deemed appropriate. The rules aren’t entirely clear in this case.”

“Oh, we wouldn’t want to break any rules,” he drawled softly.

She ignored his teasing glance. “If Aunt Kirby had been of my direct bloodline, like a grandmother, it would have to be much longer. But for a great-aunt by marriage—and a person over eighty—not to mention it is the Season and a girl only has so many of those before she’s on the shelf, the ladies I consulted all agreed that four weeks in black and two in half-mourning seemed just right.”

“Well, thank God that’s settled.”

“Jason!”

“She’s dead, love. She isn’t going to care. Knowing her, she wouldn’t have cared while she was alive.”

“True. Actually, free spirit that she was, and all those years that she spent widowed, Aunt Kirby hated black bombazine. She always said it made people look like crows.”

“Or lumps of coal?” he reminded her.

She beamed at him.

He nodded, tapping the invitation against his opposite palm. “Aye, I got one of these. I can go. It’s not like I have anything more important to do, well, ever.” He let out a disgruntled sigh.

She tilted her head and studied him. “You’re bored witless, aren’t you?”

“Not at the moment.”

She frowned. “Still, that worries me.”

“Why?”

“Because when we were children, it was always when you started getting bored that you ended up landing in a scrape of some sort. We shall have to entertain you somehow.”

“No,” he said. “That’s just it. I’m so bloody sick of entertainment I could shoot myself.” The words slipped out, seeming to take even him by surprise. “So to speak,” he added, dropping his gaze.

Felicity gazed at him, intrigued. “So you want something serious, then. Something that matters.”

He glanced cautiously at her from under his lashes and shrugged, looking very much at a loss. “I don’t even know what’s left to try.”

Her heart clenched to find that somehow, under the hard, polished gleam of all his worldly sophistication, he was still her lost boy.

But she looked away and nodded briskly. “Don’t worry, my friend. I shall think on it for you. I promise I’ll come up with something meaningful for you by the night of this ball. Meet me there and I shall give you your instructions.”

He snorted. “Oh, indeed?”

“Yes, indeed!” she countered. “You will come, won’t you?
You
may be fed up with fun, but I’ve spent the past several years of my life looking after an old lady! You think
you’re
bored? Humor me!”

“Very well,” he said in a long-suffering tone, laughing when she smacked him in the arm to jolt an answer out of him. “All right, all right! You don’t have to beat me, Miss Carvel. I said I’d come.”

“Good! Because I am going to have the most glorious gown made just for the occasion and I am going to be…magnificent!”

“Well, then, this I truly must see.” He sighed. “I suppose you do have to start spending all that blunt of yours. By the way, if any of these flower boys gives you any trouble, just let me know and I’ll thrash ’em for you.”

The offer took her aback. “How sweet.”

“Eh, don’t flatter yourself. It’s only for your brother’s sake, Felicity. Honor and all that rot.”

“Ah, right, of course,” she answered, matching his tone of mock gravity. “I’m sure they won’t perturb me, anyway. But you know, if it ever came to that, you wouldn’t necessarily have to do the thing yourself. You, being a duke and all. Perhaps you could become the patron of a skilled assassin next.”

“
That
is an excellent idea. It’s not like any woman’s worth getting punched in the face for.”

“Absolutely not!”

“Not even the one who followed me around pestering me since she was old enough to walk.”

“Mm, there’s no accounting for taste. And besides,” she said, “what if you fought my suitors and one of them broke your nose? Let’s be honest, Jason. You really can’t afford to get any uglier.”

He grinned. “Hold on. I’ll think of a snappy rejoinder any minute now.”

“You see? This is what happens when you dull your wits with liquor every night.”

“Don’t scold me, you minx.”

“Somebody has to.”

They were both still grinning at each other over their exchange of playful insults when Mrs. Brown appeared in the parlor doorway.

“Ahem.” She glowered at the easy, romping warmth that filled the room, then greeted him with a wary nod. “Your Grace.”

“Mrs. Brown. Ahem.” The great rakehell stood at attention and gave her a very correct bow.

Felicity smiled at the woman. Nothing could dim her mood now. “Are you ready to go and imbibe from the well of the muses, Mrs. Brown?”

“Just let me get my parasol,” she said with a last suspicious glare.

After she had bustled off, Jason leaned down to murmur in Felicity’s ear. “’Tis my mission today to get on her good side.”

“Good luck with that.”

“Watch and learn,” he whispered.

A few minutes later, they left the house and walked out to his extravagant black town coach. Then, as they set out for the artists’ house, he proceeded to work his charm on the older lady.

He attempted first to draw her out by asking her about her hobbies. Mrs. Brown was reluctant to engage in conversation with him, but resisting the Duke of Netherford was easier said than done. He had been conquering female opposition of all kinds with that devilish smile since the day he was born.

Felicity watched the two of them in amusement, helping him just enough to point out that Mrs. Brown was a fabulous hand at cribbage and produced impeccable embroidery.

Steered onto the right path, he was soon wearing her down. Why he bothered, Felicity scarcely knew. She was rather annoyed at her chaperone, herself. All Felicity had been able to think about for the past two days was Jason, but Mrs. Brown wanted her to direct her interests elsewhere. Anywhere but toward him.

“I doubt he has any interest in marriage,” Mrs. Brown had said with a sniff earlier that day. Felicity had to admit the woman had probably been right.

In truth, she did not know how she had let herself get swept up in him so quickly once again.

I’m only setting myself up to be hurt,
she thought.

But she couldn’t seem to stop. It was dizzying, how connected to him she felt once again, despite the time and distance that had passed between them. Their old bond had instantly returned, as though they’d never been estranged. Being with him had always left her rather breathless as a girl. She would have hoped that part of her would have outgrown him by now, but apparently not. Even to this day, all grown up, she was as excited to be near him, as drawn in by his magnetism as she had been in the past.

Perhaps this time she could at least refrain from crawling onto his lap and trying to kiss him…

All she knew was that, for once, her brother wasn’t there to come between them, to pull her back and reel him in.

For once, at last, deliciously, she finally had Jason all to herself.

The question was, what was she going to do with the opportunity?

She considered it as she sat across from him in his elegant carriage, studying him discreetly. He really was a pleasure to look at. As she watched him pretending to be interested in hearing Mrs. Brown describe her latest sewing project, she found herself wondering why he went through so many lovers.

Boredom? Ego? Or did his hunger go deeper? It was as though he was constantly seeking something he could never find. In her heart of hearts, she knew what it was and the blasted man was looking in the wrong place, consuming the wrong thing. Gorging himself on what would never slake his hunger. A man at sea could drink all the water in the ocean and still die of thirst.

With everything in her, Felicity felt—had always felt—that
she
could give Jason what he needed. Satisfy him completely. A dangerous thought.

For her to try had always been her riskiest impulse, her parents’ occasional worry, and her brother’s greatest fear.

She was not blind to the fact that the effort could end in her destruction. Maybe he had been wise to stay away, she thought with a sigh. For heaven’s sake, she did not wish to be the cause of some hideous Greek-style tragedy with him and her brother shooting each other at twenty paces at dawn.

But it didn’t have to end that way. Not if she could make him love her.

Nakedly admitting that desire to herself took even Felicity by surprise.

The carriage soon rolled to a halt before a handsome middle-class sort of residence in bustling Bloomsbury, home to the British Museum and to countless bookshops and coffeehouses frequented by poets and artists. The redbrick house had a green-painted door, three windows per story, and a wide but shallow balcony running across the width of the second floor.

As soon as his footman got the carriage door for them, Jason stepped out and handed the ladies down. They began walking toward the front door of the house when it swung open before them.

There stood a handsome young man with tousled black hair and romantically disheveled clothes, which immediately identified him as one of the resident artists.

If this had not sufficed, of course, his Italian accent would have done so. “Your Grace! Welcome, signore! Ladies,
benvenuto
! Come in, come in!”

“Allow me to present the sublimely talented painter, Mr. Omero Caradonna,” Jason said as they stepped into the small entrance hall. He then gave their names to the beautiful lad, who bowed to the ladies with a sweeping continental flourish.

“I am a-so happy you have come! Giovanelli told us you might honor us with a visit today, Your Grace. Alas—” Caradonna winced. “He, himself, is not here at the moment.”

“Ah. Of course he’s not,” Jason said dryly.

“He is a-very sorry. He forgot that he has to teach the pianoforte lesson to the young daughters of de Lord and Lady Edgecombe.”

“I think he’s hiding from me,” Jason murmured in a mild tone.

Caradonna politely pretended not to hear. “But it would be my honor to give your guests the tour, sir! Ladies, if I may, h-here is the parlor,” he said with obvious eagerness to please as he gestured to the doorway behind them. “If you like to see, I have a-dozens of my paintings in various stages of drying all over the walls in here. Come, come!”

As they joined him in the cozy front sitting room, they were soon ooh-ing and ahh-ing over the dizzying array of his artwork on the walls.

“A few of these, of course, are Sanfratello’s. He is mainly a sculptor but also paints from time to time. But not as good as me,” the young Italian added with a jolly little half-smile.

Felicity glanced at him and would have wagered that his sparkly black eyes won him a lot of female hearts. Caradonna answered their casual questions about what inspired him, how long such impressive paintings took to make, where he had studied, and so forth. In due time, they stepped back out into the entrance hall as their tour continued.

“Across from us is a-the business office,” Caradonna explained, “and back here are the rooms Giovanelli uses as his musical conservatory.”

They followed Caradonna as he strode farther into the house, waving them cheerfully into the room behind the parlor. “This is, in truth, de dining room. We still eat here some nights, but Giovanelli has claimed it.”

He glanced around at the ceiling. “He says it has the best acoustics. Ah, the sideboard used to stand over there, but as you see, now it is reserved for de maestro’s pianoforte.”

“The room is very spacious,” Mrs. Brown remarked. “But it is a pity Mr. Giovanelli could not be here himself. I daresay it’s rather disrespectful of him.”