Never Resist a Rake (17 page)

“Freddie, that's positively wicked.” The solid feel of John pressed against her hip as he initiated her in delight rushed back into her. Rebecca knew firsthand about those “less than contemplative parts.” Where had Freddie come by such knowledge? “I'm surprised at you.”

“Nevertheless,” Freddie said with a sniff, “it's true.”

“Well, I'm not one to believe every bit of gossip I hear. Someone may spread unpleasant lies about me sometime, and I wouldn't want others to believe it without giving me a chance to convince them otherwise,” Rebecca said. “Let's go meet her.”

“Oh, no, we mustn't. Scandal taints everyone within its reach, and that woman fairly reeks of it.”

If John invited the lady to Somerfield Park, Rebecca wanted to know why. “If you won't go with me, I'll go by myself,” she said and started across the room.

If one catches me smiling when there's nothing amusing afoot, it's because I'm contemplating doing something I really ought not. However, if I'm chuckling under my breath, it means I've already done it.

—Lady Chloe Endicott

Rebecca wasn't sure how to approach Lady Chloe. They hadn't been properly introduced, and she didn't know any of the respectable gentlemen surrounding the lady who might be relied upon to do the honors. Lord Blackwood and his toadies didn't count. It occurred to Rebecca that she was about to commit the same social faux pas that John had when he spoke to her in the museum without benefit of introduction.

Rebecca hoped Lady Chloe would be kinder to her than she and Freddie had been to John. The lady's smile was encouraging.

Rebecca dipped in a shallow curtsy. “How do you do?”

“According to the gossips, I do entirely too well and far too often.” The lady rose to her feet and dropped a correct curtsy in return. “I'm Lady Chloe Endicott, but then you probably know that.”

Rebecca repeated her curtsy, still not sure what to say. All the guidebooks for correct behavior she and Freddie patterned their lives after had neglected to give instruction on how to make the acquaintance of a self-admitted merry widow.

“You're very brave, whoever you are,” Lady Chloe said. “None of the other women here would spit on me if I were on fire.”

“Only because spitting is not the done thing,” popped into Rebecca's head and out her mouth before she could censor herself. Had her night on the roof with John removed all her inhibitions?

The lady laughed. Whatever else she was, Lady Chloe didn't take herself too seriously, and she harbored no illusions about her welcome in this company. Rebecca admired her pluck.

“My lady,” Lord Blackwood said, his voice as smooth as oil, “may I present Miss Rebecca Kearsey?”

“Oh, so you're Miss Kearsey, she of the boxing crib fame. It must have been wildly exciting to have two men exchange blows over you. I confess it sounds quite…exhilarating.” Lady Chloe took Rebecca's arm and started a slow walk around the room with her, seemingly oblivious to the way heads turned to follow their progress.

“Perhaps it would have been, had I not been tied up at the time,” Rebecca said in a whisper. From the corner of her eye, she saw Freddie's jaw drop in horrified fascination. Even if her conversation with Lady Chloe couldn't be overheard, this little promenade firmly equated Rebecca with the infamous Merry Widow in the minds of the other guests.

“Really? I'd have thought being tied up would add something to the experience,” she said with a throaty laugh. “Despite your naiveté, I do believe you and I shall get on swimmingly, Miss Kearsey. Lord Hartley has told me so much about you.”

“How very surprising.” Rebecca's cheeks heated as she wondered what John might have told this wholly unorthodox woman—or even why he was connected with her in the first place. “He neglected to mention you.”

“Oh, my dear, you should consider that a good sign. Clearly, he had other things on his mind when he was with you if he failed to drop my name.” Her very red mouth tilted in a crooked smile. “But a word of advice. Never believe a man will tell you about other women in his circle of acquaintance. My husbands never did, God rest them. At least, one may hope they're at rest now. I certainly gave them little enough of that while they were alive. But back to your dealings with gentlemen. May I advise lowered expectations where they are concerned? It reduces disappointment, you know.”

Rebecca had been prepared to like Lady Chloe for John's sake, since she must be a friend of his. But the lady's words sounded more like a warning than friendly advice.

“And yet expectation seems to be the watchword for this house party,” Rebecca said. “What is yours, if I may ask?”

She cast a smile of promise to the group of gentlemen she'd recently abandoned to walk with Rebecca. “Why, the same as every other unattached woman here—to find a husband, of course.”

The door to the drawing room opened slowly and Lord Hartley entered with the dowager marchioness on his arm. Framed in the doorway, the two of them were dazzling. A net of gems was set in the dowager's iron-gray coiffure. More winked at her wattled throat and wrists. John needed no jewels to draw every eye in the room. His dark good looks were devastating enough when he'd been in nothing but his shirtsleeves in that boxing crib. In full dress, he made Rebecca's mouth go dry.

“The Most Honorable Phillippa, the Dowager Marchioness of Somerset,” Mr. Hightower intoned from his place beside the open door. “And the Right Honorable Earl of Hartley.”

Rebecca and her family had been announced in a similar way, but the room hadn't gone still while the butler called out their names and honors, such as they were. Now, she'd have wagered she would have been able to hear a mouse hiccup behind the wall, if any dared invade so grand a place as Somerfield Park.

John didn't catch her eye or even look for her particularly. He and his grandmother moved toward the first group of guests nearest the door. Conversations resumed around the room, the low drone of an agitated hive.

“The man of the hour,” Lady Chloe said under her breath. “Perhaps you'd do well to return to your family and friends, Miss Kearsey, to wait upon his lordship to acknowledge you. If you've any goodwill built up with the dowager, it will dissipate quickly once she sees you with me.”

“Perhaps you give people too little credit. You might be surprised at who will befriend you.”

“With my reputation?”

“For good or ill, reputations aren't always warranted. A wise person makes their own judgment. But you're not giving them an opportunity if you push them away at the outset,” Rebecca said. “Lord Hartley has the same habit. He rejects others before they have the chance to reject him.”

“Astute as well as pretty. It's clear you haven't rejected him. No wonder he likes you.” The lady cast a sidelong glance at Rebecca that made her feel she was being hoisted into a cosmic scale of some sort. Chloe's arched brow said Rebecca hadn't been found wanting. “I hope we'll have the opportunity to become better acquainted.”

“Depend upon on it.” Rebecca dropped a quick curtsy and left Lady Chloe to rejoin her parents by the fire before John and his grandmother worked their way around the room to them.

No
wonder
he
likes
you.

Lady Chloe's words echoed in her mind. Rebecca still wasn't sure if the outcast lady was going to be a friend or a foe, but she was grateful for her words.

He
likes
me.

After their torrent of kisses, after the world-shifting things John had done with her on the roof, after watching the stars fall together, Rebecca hoped for more than mere liking. But with a man like John, who didn't give his trust easily, who walked warily around anything so ephemeral as a feeling, liking was at least a start.

“I don't see Lord and Lady Somerset here,” Lady Kearsey said when Rebecca perched on the arm of her mother's chair.

“Because his lordship is unwell, I believe they are already seated in the dining room,” Lord Kearsey said. “Perhaps we ought to have asked for the same consideration for you, my love. I know how it tires you to walk, and it's a long promenade to the dining room from here.”

“I don't wish to be singled out for special treatment,” her mother said. “I'll be fine.”

Lady Kearsey would be red-faced and blown with effort after walking to the dining room, but she wouldn't complain. Ignoring her symptoms was her way of coping with her disease. Rebecca wondered if her father's suggestion that they be seated ahead of the rest of the party was motivated by concern for his wife's condition or if the opportunity to have private speech with the marquess and his marchioness before the other guests arrived in the dining room was the bigger draw.

“Here they come, Rebecca,” her father whispered when the dowager and John finally headed their way. “Turn on the charm, girl.”

All things being equal, compared to the other wellborn ladies in the room who had the family connections and fat dowries to dangle before Lord Hartley, Rebecca had no chance of charming the new earl. But all things were not equal.

John liked her.

If last night was any indication, he liked her very much.

* * *

John had behaved himself as he squired the dowager around the room. They still weren't on the best of terms, but the ice had been broken between them. Whatever her culpability in the pain of his childhood, he wasn't likely to get more of an apology than she'd already condescended to give. As much distance as she'd given him as a boy, she seemed to be trying to make up for lost time by actively trying to shape his adulthood.

She'd find him far less malleable now.

However, the dowager wouldn't be able to fault his performance at the moment. He greeted each of his guests with the gravity of his station. He even let Lady Somerset have her head as she adroitly maneuvered him away from the group surrounding Lady Chloe that included his Daemon Club friends.

Rebecca and her family were waiting patiently for John and the dowager to acknowledge them. She glanced his way, and their gazes met for the briefest flicker. A sharp pang bit into his chest. It was enough to make him believe in the stories of Cupid and his darts. She was mesmerizing. He had to restrain himself from dashing across the room and catching her up in his arms.

He'd met many lovely ladies already this evening. Several were witty. Plenty of them dripped with precious jewels, hinting at even more generous dowries. One was downright frightening in her intensity; he'd recognized that one as Rebecca's friend from the museum.

But none made his chest glow the way Rebecca did.

She bent her head to speak to her mother, who was looking very wan despite judicious use of paint. He wondered if there was a way for him to use his newfound wealth and position to arrange for Lady Kearsey to take a cure on the Continent someplace. Surely there was a sanatorium whose treatments would put the roses back into Rebecca's mother's cheeks. He'd speak to Richard about it in the morning.

What point was there in being the heir to a marquess if he couldn't do a little good?

Especially since he was planning to do a great deal of bad in the near future and would need some positives to balance out the scales.

He ached to snatch Rebecca away and shield her, but there simply wasn't time. He wasn't going to be able to say more than a few words to her in front of her parents and his grandmother, and none of those words could give her warning of what was to come.

She was wearing long gloves with her pale muslin gown. He wished she weren't. He wished when he took her hand so very correctly before God and everybody that he could at least brush his lips on her bare knuckles instead of on silk. Maybe he'd even turn her hand over and press a lover's kiss into her open palm.

John cut off the current debutante before him, who had stuttered through their exchange of pleasantries, by offering the hope that she'd enjoy herself at Somerfield Park. Then he started toward Rebecca with the dowager in tow. The longcase clock chimes interrupted their progress.

“It's eight o'clock,” Lady Somerset the elder said. “We must cease these greetings and lead our guests through to the dining room.”

“We haven't met everyone yet.”

“I know, but there's simply no time. I've seen to it that you've met the important ones, so the rest will keep until after dinner,” the dowager said in hushed tones. “We must stick to the schedule. Your father cannot bear to be in company any longer than the time we've allotted.”

After the disjointed midnight conversation with his confused father, John was surprised they were going to trot out the marquess at all.

“Very well,” he said. “But perhaps there's time for me to give attention to one more guest without extending the evening for his lordship. Lord Richard, will you do the honors and escort Lady Somerset to the dining room?”

“Delighted.” His half brother stepped up, offering their grandmother his arm. The hand-off was done so smoothly and so publicly, the dowager couldn't object. “Seymour, I assume I may trust you to see my lady to the same place?”

“Also delighted,” Lawrence Seymour said, “but I can't promise I won't try to convince Sophie to run away with me between here and the first course.”

Sophie laughed. “Trust me, Lawrence, you'd be bringing me back before we reached Somerset-on-the-Sea. I've a wickedly sharp tongue and wouldn't hesitate to use it, but I trust you to walk a few hallways with me. Now, John, since your arm is unadorned, who will you take to dinner?”

This was the defining moment of the evening. His choice would signal the front-runner in the dreaded Hartley Hunt and he knew it. Was counting on it. He surveyed the room and read hope in every pair of feminine eyes. The naked trust on Rebecca's sweet face made his gut burn. This would be tantamount to a declaration.

He set his face like flint and turned away from her, looking for another. There she was, up to her pretty little chin in aspiring swains.

“Lady Chloe,” John said as he crossed the drawing room to her side. The other bachelors around her stepped back to make room for him as if he were the dominant bull in the herd. “Will you do me the honor of accompanying me to supper?”

Chloe sidled up to him and draped herself from his proffered arm. “Why, Lord Hartley, I thought you'd never ask.”