Lady Killer (5 page)

Mariana gave him a soulful look. “Darling Saunders, you must not mock me. You know that I am only a meek little thing, a baby dew drop, and easily overwhelmed by your superior mind.”

Two patches of color appeared on Saunders’s cheeks. “Lady Mariana, I would never insult you. Never. I would rather stab myself through the heart with this knife,” he took something that looked like a child’s toy from his waistband, “than let it be said that I offended you. Please, my lady, free me of the stain of your displeasure or let me die.”

“Calm down, Saunders,” Mariana said, not at all displeased by this show of loyalty from her grandmother’s secretary. “I forgive you. And I do hope you are right about the bodice of this dress.”

“There is no question.” Saunders replaced his toy dagger at his waist. “As soon as he sees you in that gown, the viscount’s first thought will be that you must have jewels for your beautiful neck. Only a monster could react otherwise.”

“Oh! The darling viscount does particularly like to talk of my neck in his letters,” Mariana mused. “He has compared it many times to the threads woven by the fates, so thin and delicate that it is a wonder they can utterly destroy a man’s life.” She smiled to herself for another instant, then, exhibiting one of the rapid changes in mood to which she was prone and which young men found so fascinating, she frowned. “I do wish he would get here. This party is tedious.”

As if on her command, the crowds passing in front of Mariana to pay their respects drifted to the sides, and Miles appeared before her. Corin had been promised twenty pounds by the Arboretti if he produced his master in good condition, and he had earned his money in hard labor. Miles was resplendent, radiating wealth, power, elegance, and good odor in equal measure.

But there was nothing Corin could do about his mood. Miles’s face had grown blacker and blacker as the hour of the ball approached. The vitality had drained from his movements, his eyes had slipped back down into slits, and his face was once again a mask of bitterness. There had been a time, Corin was aware, when all of that was merely affect, but as the day of his marriage approached, it had begun to sit naturally. Even the drinking, which had been a cover to allow him to gather information in taverns, had assumed a more real aspect, as Corin knew from the ever larger pile of empty decanters he collected from his master’s bedside each morning.

But as much as he would have liked to be, Miles was not drunk as he entered the ball. Unable to bring himself to really examine the woman he would be spending the rest of his life with, he instead focused on her companions, bowing to each as the introductions were made. One of them looked familiar to him, but it took Miles a moment to recognize the young man called Saunders, the son of a country squire he had met years ago, beneath the patina of a tall, gangly gentleman that he now wore and the cloud of absurd cologne that circled him. Next to him, his arm through Mariana’s, was some sort of bearded foreign professor of indeterminate origin with an accent that hurt Miles’s head. On the other side of the bride stood Lady Alecia, her grandmother, whose quivering coiffure made Miles a bit nauseous, and behind them, whistling to himself in a corner, stood Mariana’s father, Sir Edwin Nonesuch. Of all of them, Miles decided he liked Sir Edwin best, mostly because nothing about him made Miles queasy.

But he did feel queasy, right through Lady Alecia asking him how he did and him saying fine, right through Sir Edwin giving him a menacing scowl before fading back into the wainscoting, and especially through Mariana curtseying to him with an “Oh!” and a sigh and asking if he could not hear the baby rabbits raising their little voices to sing in doleful—“dulcet” the foreign professor put in helpfully—tones at their union. It took Miles a moment to recover from the shock of this question. He was still mouthing the words “baby rabbits” to himself, soundlessly, when Mariana went on.

“This, darling Viscount, is Saunders Cotton, my grandmother’s secretary,” Mariana explained, gesturing to the man Miles had recognized, who promptly blushed. “And this—” she pushed forward the bearded fellow, “—is Doctor LaForge, the famous scholar and my tutor. Of course you have heard of him.”

“It is a pleasure to make the acquaintance of a being of such greatness as you possess, monsieur le viscount,” La Forge said, bowing low and averting his gaze from Miles’s like one who dare not look upon a great idol.

Miles gave the man a smile with an amazing resemblance to a sneer and muttered something under his breath that sounded to his cousins like “simpering puppies.”

Mariana heard it too and clapped with delight. “Oh! I knew as soon as you set eyes on me our spirits would frolic together like baby clouds at the start of a new day. I have always wanted a puppy! Oh! Do have your man bring one to me, darling Viscount. One with large, soft eyes that speak of his sweet baby soul. Like mine.”

Much to the horror of the Arboretti, Miles smiled. It was not a real smile but one of the ghastly new expressions he used when he was about to flay someone alive verbally. But before he could begin, a bell was rung at the other end of the hall and the crowd grew silent.

A middle-aged man, with his hair slicked to the side and very red lips, cleared his throat, and all eyes turned to him. He looked down at a piece of parchment he was holding, then up at the crowd. “It was the wish of his late Lordship, the current viscount’s father, that this letter be read on the opening day of the celebration of his son’s marriage,” the man began without introduction. “He left it in the care of my father, his business agent, but my father being infirm, he asked me to read it in his place.”

The man licked his lips and began to read.

“
‘On this, the first day of July in the year fifteen hundred and sixty-five, in gratitude for Sir Edwin’s saving my life, I do hereby betroth my son to the first-born daughter of my dear friend Sir Edwin Nonesuch. Twenty-five years from today, her hand shall be joined with his in marriage, and her fortunes likewise. From the day of her twenty-fifth birthday forward, Sir Edwin’s daughter will be sole heir to my son’s estate. Only if the Deity sees fit to take one of them to himself before that day, will this betrothal be voided. Otherwise, it is my firmest wish that it proceed. To that end, I pledge my son’s complete obedience. If my son should prove to be craven or unworthy of his blood and my title, if he should behave with dishonor and break this contract, then I disown him, and order that he shall forfeit his entire fortune to Sir Edwin Nonesuch.
’ ”

Craven or unworthy.
The words that bound Miles to the damn contract. They were like an incantation, guaranteeing his obedience. If his father had not included them, had not yoked his son’s honor and character to the betrothal, Miles would have extricated himself long ago, willingly giving up his fortune in exchange for his freedom. Miles had always thought that those last words were designed to goad him, to be a challenge to him, a thorn in his side. He could still hear his father’s predictions about him—that any son who was more interested in what made a gun work than how to fire it, any son who would not back his father in a fight when someone called him a thick-headed beast, but would happily jump into a fray to stop some leprous tramp from being robbed, that any son who kept his father from disciplining his mother with the cat-o-nine-tails when the bitch deserved it, was unworthy and cowardly and a failure and would bring dishonor to the Dearbourn title. Miles would be damned before he fulfilled those predictions by backing out of the betrothal.

“Unfortunately for Sir Edwin, it does not look as though anyone is thinking of breaking this contract,” the man who had been reading joked with an artificial smile.

The assembled company laughed politely at the remark, and raised their glasses in a toast to the bride and bridegroom. Beaming at the adoration she felt communicated to her in waves from every corner, Mariana gave a low curtsey, exposing an expanse of alabaster bosom that at least one man in the room would have killed to call his own.

That man was not Miles. His attention no longer held by the reader, he turned it to the glass of sparkling wine someone had given him, and, having gulped that, to Tristan’s glass, which he pried from his cousin’s fingers. Slowly, he began to feel better. He was just about to reach for Sebastian’s when he saw Mariana shudder.

He wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve. “Now that my fortune is yours, you might spend it on getting a proper dress made,” he told her with an unflattering glance at her bodice. “There is no reason for you to go about half-exposed and freezing like that.”

“Oh! Listen to his divine similitude for me,” Mariana trilled to her companions, ignoring the doctor’s whispered correction “solicitude” as she leaned toward Miles to confide, “A heart such as mine, darling Viscount, needs no covering, but must remain unexhibited so it may rise to the heavens.”

“Uninhibited,” the doctor whispered.

Miles stared at her dumbfounded.

“I knew you would understand, darling,” she went on, awash in smiles. “I knew you would see that only jewels might come near it without fear of damage. I have already reserved an emerald pendant on a pearl choker at Beaumond’s, Viscount,” she explained, naming one of London’s most expensive and most garish jewelers. “You need only send your man to buy them. Darling Beaumond said he would await your bill of credit until the baby birds cease to fly and all upon the earth perish.”

S’teeth I hope that happens soon, Miles thought to himself, utterly undone at the prospect of having to spend the rest of the evening, not to mention his life, with this woman. He felt like a seasick sailor in the middle of a storm whose arms were broken and whose boat had sprung a bad leak. Then, suddenly, he saw a life raft. “Of course you shall have the jewels. In fact, I shall see to them, and the puppy, right this moment if you can spare me your company.”

The word “jewels” had a marvelous effect and Mariana could not dismiss him fast enough. Just the instant before, he had been prepared to rid himself of the viscount title forever so that he would never need to hear it on her lips again, particularly coupled with the words “darling” or “baby,” but he was now glad to have it, if only because the rents from the lands associated with it might bring in enough income to purchase him a lifetime of jewel-induced liberation. “This first meeting has surpassed my fondest imaginings. You are an even more incredible woman than I ever dared dream,” Miles said as he bowed in departure, and meant it acutely.

While Mariana rejoiced at her conquest of the darling viscount, so like a lonely baby horse until she came—“Oh! He is utterly smitten, isn’t he Saunders?”—Miles barreled past his guests in search of wine. Or liquor. Or poison. Anything to dispatch him from his misery for at least a moment. He finally located a long table covered with savory delicacies, and spotted a carafe of sparkling golden wine at its far end. His fingers had almost closed around its neck in a fair approximation of what he wished someone might do to Mariana, when he felt a hand on his arm and a smooth voice whispered in his ear, “You are looking marvelous, my lord. Even better than I remember.”

Lady Starrat Peters gave Miles a wide smile as he turned to face her. “Of course,” she said, appraising him, “it might only be the clothes. I would have to see you out of them to know for certain if you have changed. Are you busy right now?”

Miles had known the beautiful Lady Starrat for many years and had been fond of her, both because of her wit and because she had been one of Beatrice’s only friends from childhood. There had been a time when a proposition like the one she had just made would have amused and intrigued him. But now the idea of such intimacy with another person left him more than cold. The only company he was interested in at that moment was the company of the wine decanter in his hand.

“Don’t look so shocked, Miles,” Lady Starrat laughed. “I was only going to ask you to dance.”

Miles gave what was supposed to be a smile. “It would be a pleasure, Lady Starrat, but not tonight. I have some important business to attend to.” She did not need to know that it consisted of downing as much wine as he could absorb.

Gripping a full decanter—his “business partner”—tightly in one hand, Miles had just begun threading his way to the door of the Great Hall when there was a chorus of screeches behind him followed by a thud, a clatter, and the feel of an object sailing into his back.

The Arboretti, who had been following close on Miles’s heels to ensure that he did not leave the party, stopped dead in their tracks.

“Isn’t that—” Sophie whispered.

“Do you see—” Bianca asked.

“What the devil—” Tristan and Sebastian said simultaneously.

“A monkey,” Crispin pronounced with enormous surprise.

“And a woman,” Ian added

“With dark brown hair—” Crispin went on.

“—Brown eyes—” Ian put in.

“—And a smudge of dirt on her cheek,” they whispered in unison.

Miles, who had swung around ready to give his cousins hell for their overblown attempts to keep him from his own damn wine, found himself speechless for the second time that day.

Clio was not much better, but she had a better excuse. Miles at least knew where he was. Only minutes before she had been alone in her library, reading at her desk by the flame of a single candle, and now she found herself standing in a great hall blazing with light and filled with the cream of English society.