His Wicked Kiss (56 page)

“Ah, just a minor bit of, er, unpleasantness, but I thought you should know. Shall we?”

He did not know why the younger twin saw fit to shepherd him over to the wall to tell him what was afoot, but he soon realized it was merely because Lucien knew the size of Jack’s temper, and could guess that his news was the sort of thing that could truly set him off.

“What’s going on?” Jack waited, his arms akimbo.

“You, ah, fired a maid yesterday?” Lucien asked diplomatically.

“Yes. What of it?” Jack furrowed his brow. “Wait, how did you know about that?” He hadn’t seen his brothers yesterday even to have mentioned it.

“I’m not the only one who knows, I’m afraid.”

“Huh?”

“This woman, Lisette, I imagine she came to you well recommended.”

“Aye, she had worked for other ladies in the ton.”

“Well, she’s been talking to them since you gave her the sack.”

“What?”

“Jack—don’t explode. She has started a rumor about you and Eden.”

“Oh, bloody hell—!”

Society never changed.

“I don’t know how far it’s gone yet,” Lucien said soothingly. “I just heard it on the other end of the ballroom. But I thought you should know. You can tell Eden as you see fit.”

“What does this rumor claim? I am dying to know,” he said in a jaundiced tone.

Lucien’s gaze slid to the floor. “She said that, uh, the two of you have a sham marriage, and that all the time she worked for your wife, you and Eden never shared a bed.”

Jack’s jaw dropped. He snapped it shut again, glowering. “I’ll wring her neck! Of all the spiteful, petty, conniving—”

He fumed a bit at the rumor’s implied slight to his manhood. What business was it of anyone if he had not been sleeping with his wife for a spell until last night? Then he realized Eden was bound to hear it soon. He had to protect her.

He looked over at her in concern. “T
hank
s, Luce. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go get my wife.” He would rather tell her himself than have her hear it from somebody else.

He saw that the first dance had ended and blinked to spy his wife now surrounded by a swarm of elegant Town Corinthians.

The image threw him off guard.
What the
—?

Had those sly chaps heard the rumor, too?

Good God.

Some of them must have heard it, he thought, which would explain why they were buzzing about her like so many bees to a rare, delicious flower. If they believed Eden was trapped in a loveless marriage with a husband who neglected her in bed, then they would naturally assume that meant she was available, in the way that so many Society wives were—in the way, indeed, that Jack’s feckless mother had been back in her day.

His anger deepened at the thought. But Eden was no sophisticated Georgiana Hawkscliffe, too innocent to know what was really in those scoundrels’ minds—namely, bedding her the minute his back was turned.

He was already in motion, ready to start throwing people through windows.

It was not lost on him that if he had danced with her, this would not have happened.

Why was she smiling at them?

He wasn’t sure what the devil to do about the rumor. Society wranglings were not his forte. He had to think. Perhaps Alec might have some ideas. Right now, he wanted out of here, and he was taking his wife with him. He didn’t care anymore if it was her first ball.

They were going home.

As he marched toward her, a swarthy, splendidly uniformed stranger stepped into his path.

Jack stopped.

“Pardon me, señor.” Beneath his thin, black mustache, a smile curved the man’s lips, but his dark eyes were like daggers. “Lord Jack Knight, I presume?”

Jack tensed, instantly on his guard. “Aye?”

The Spaniard clicked his heels and bowed to Jack with crisp, Continental panache. “I represent the court of His Majesty, King Ferdinand of Spain. I should like very much to have a word with you—if you don’t mind.”

Ruiz’s superior.

Jack gritted his teeth, biting back his impatience. So, there were six good-looking men flirting with his luscious, young wife, each with a blue-blood pedigree no doubt finer than his own. And at the moment, there was not a damned thing he could do about it.

Very well
. Let her enjoy it, he thought with gritted teeth. He could endure it another two minutes. For now, the Spanish ambassador had his full attention. He was stuck with this mission, never mind that his beautiful—pregnant—young wife had half the House of Lords smiling at her, only biding their time.

Just waiting for him to leave for South America.

So, these were Town Corinthians in coats from Savile Row, Eden mused. The dashing gentlemen she had dreamed about, far away in the jungle.

There was something in their eyes she didn’t trust; their smooth, cocksure smiles made her uneasy. Hemmed in by them and answering their polite questions in a distracted manner, she wanted Jack, but she had no sooner succeeded in extricating herself from the knot of these too-friendly men when she saw Jack being hounded by the Spaniard.

At once, she remembered his warning that if she saw a black-haired Spanish man anywhere in her vicinity, she should retreat. Jack’s arms were folded across his chest as he spoke with the man; the studied way in which her husband refused even to glance in her direction served as a silent warning to Eden not to come near.

She obeyed at once, hastening away from the dance floor.

She remembered how Jack and she had admired the conservatory on the way in to the ball while waiting in the line of carriages; they had spoken of looking at it together. She decided to wait there—Jack would soon figure out where to find her.

Before anyone else could snare her in conversation, she ducked out of the ballroom and found her way through the maze of the enormous manor to the spacious conservatory.

Immediately upon stepping into the tree-filled, glassed-in world, all the trouble in her soul seemed to quiet.

Glass and lacy white ironwork were whipped upward in a froth, culminating in a beautiful center rotunda that gave the exotic trees plenty of room to grow.

There were palms and giant bamboos in huge pots and planters; their pinnate fronds reached up into the central dome. There were a few fragrant orange and lemon trees, a grapefruit tree, and several spiky pineapples, as well.

A profusion of flowers surrounded the towering Doric column at the edge of the rotunda, crowned with a graceful statue of the goddess Flora.

Fairy lights strung here and there lent an air of magic to the hothouse jungle, heated by furnaces and carefully concealed piping, a perfect, humid environment for their host’s collection of tropical plants, shrubs, and trees.

With the night so dark beyond the glass, the tiny colored lanterns threw fantastic leaf-shaped shadows everywhere and etched the grids of the countless window mullions across the floor. The music from the ballroom was muffled here; louder came the rain’s steady symphony drumming the glass panes of the great, arched windows.

There was a stone fountain in the middle of it all, with a wide rim that formed a circular bench; here, Eden sat down. Wistfully, she watched the large, ornamental fish swimming in the fountain. The miniature, indoor jungle reminded her so sharply of her old life. Everything was different now. How she missed Papa. Would he never come?

Taking off her right glove, she set it down beside her and leaned down to dangle her fingers in the water, reminiscing as she waited for Jack on her days in the Orinoco Delta… her chance meetings with the occasional pink dolphin.

That life now seemed a world away.

The rain still drummed the glass and despite the occasional flash of lightning, the setting was altogether pleasant. As she sat musing, playing with the fish, she felt a faint, instinctual prickle of warning tingling on her nape, drawing her out of her memories.

She lifted her head and glanced around warily, not sure why she suddenly seemed to sense someone staring at her.

She was the only person in the conservatory.

Lightning flashed, illuminating the glass house in purple and blinding silver, flickering over the statue of Flora: In that split second, as Eden scanned the trees crowding the artificial jungle, she saw him.

Connor.

He was standing outside the conservatory, watching her through the glass, as the rain plastered his blond hair to his forehead.

She gasped, but the lightning vanished and the world beyond the glass turned black again.

She pulled back, her heart pounding. She pressed her gloveless hand to her heart for a second. No.

It couldn’t be.

Surely she must have imagined it. How could Connor be standing outside in the storm?

A few minutes later, another flash of lightning revealed the same spot where she thought she had seen him, and no one was there. Catching her breath again, she laughed at herself.

Her guilty conscience must have been to blame—guilty because as much as she longed to see her beloved papa, she hadn’t missed Connor once since she had left the jungle. He had problems, she knew, but he had always done his best to be good to her. She hadn’t been able to fall in love with him, but that didn’t mean another woman could not. He was smart, handsome.

Now that she’d left and had married someone else, he’d soon forget all about her.

Footfalls echoed just then across the flagstones of the conservatory. “Somehow I suspected that I might find you here.”

Expecting Jack, Eden looked over, but was jarred to find that instead of her husband, it was the dashing man in the red waistcoat who had danced with her briefly in the ballroom.

The flash of his white teeth gleamed in the twilight as he strolled toward her, his hands in his pockets. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “I saw you slip away. My dear lady, a true beauty can no sooner abscond from a ballroom unnoticed than the sun can slip behind the clouds without turning the whole world below it a dull, dull gray. I thought perhaps we could talk for a moment—oh, dear, but you seem distressed. May I be of use?”

“No. T
hank
you.” She straightened up and flicked the water off her fingers. “Forgive me, have we met?”

“Formally, no. But we are connected.”

“We are?”

“Yes.”

She lifted her chin to meet his gaze as he joined her—uninvited, but too confident to care.

He propped his foot on the fountain’s stone bench and posed with an elbow resting on his knee. “Just now in the ballroom, I heard someone say that you are the famed Dr. Farraday’s daughter.”

“Yes, I am.”

He smiled broadly. “My grandfather was your father’s patron for ages.”

“Old Lord Pembrooke?” she exclaimed.

He laughed. “Yes! I am his heir.”

“You’re the new Lord Pembrooke—the rakehell earl?” she blurted out, then bit her lip and blushed.

Her foreknowledge of his nickname seemed to fill him with vain pleasure. “Ah, you know, I have simply no idea why they call me that. Do you?”

She smiled wryly. “Lord Pembrooke, would you believe that you are actually the reason that I am in London?”

“What’s this?” he asked, apparently fascinated by the statement. He lowered himself slowly to sit beside her. He leaned nearer; Eden pulled back.

“You cut my father’s funding,” she informed him, but she had no intention of explaining all the details of her original plan—how she had set out on
The Winds of Fortune
to bring samples of her father’s work to London to show the rakehell earl, so that he might be persuaded to reinstate Papa’s grant.

That had been ages ago.

“Cut your father’s funding… ?” He was feigning innocence of his misdeed. “I did? No, surely. Why should I do that?”

“You were building a new country house, I believe, and upon your inheritance instructed your solicitor to tell all the artists and scholars your grandfather commissioned to—I think your exact words were—go hang.”

“Ahh, yes. Now it’s coming back to me.” He quit lying as he realized she was smarter than she looked. There was an awkward moment as he tapped his lip. Then he gave her a smile of mild contrition and stood once more, facing her. “Perhaps we can do something to rectify this sad state of affairs, for I assure you, if I had known the naturalist’s daughter was such a rare flower herself, I should have been persuaded instantly to extend Dr. Farraday’s grant.”

“My father doesn’t throw himself on any man’s mercy, my lord, and though I’m heartened to hear you’d reconsider for my sake, it won’t be necessary.”

“Are you sure about that?” he murmured, his rakish smile widening suggestively.

“Oh, yes, I’m sure. My husband, you see, is richer than Croesus. He’ll fund Papa’s research henceforth.”

“Oh, really?” he asked with a haughty snort. “Anyone I know?”

“I’m not sure,” Eden said sweetly, “but I can introduce you if you like. He’s standing right behind you.”