Tempted By the Night
Read Tempted By the Night Online
Authors: Elizabeth Boyle
Tempted by the Night
To Anne Ricci,
whose support over the last few years
has been unfailing.
You dare to live your dreams
and thus inspire me.
My heartfelt appreciation and thanks.
“To the happy couple,” declared Thomas, the Earl of Rockhurst,…
The arrival of the Earl of Rockhurst at Almack’s the…
The ladies’ retiring room had already cleared by the near-hysterical…
Kill? Hermione nearly fell out of the carriage. This time?
Kill her?
Rockhurst was in the process of taking his leave, when…
At first, nothing seemed amiss when Rockhurst entered the bookshop,…
Hermione’s confidence in her plan remained high, for she was…
“I won’t tell anyone,” the woman on his shoulder said,…
“In the darkest days of England’s history, there was a…
Rockhurst arrived at Lady Belling’s garden party later that day,…
Rockhurst took off across the lawn in a flash, leaving…
They barely made it to the nearest inn.
“Whatever is wrong with you, Minny?” Lady Walbrook asked for…
Mary Kendell settled into her favorite chair in the library…
Rockhurst spent the better part of the next week searching…
Hermione dashed toward the bright light and the sounds of…
“Rockhurst!” came the cry through the town house on Hanover…
May 29, 1810
Mayfair, London
“To the happy couple,” declared Thomas, the Earl of Rockhurst, raising his glass to bride and groom.
“To the happy couple,” the assembled guests cheered.
As the earl’s gaze swept the room, Lady Hermione Marlowe struck what she was positive was the perfect pose that would surely catch the earl’s eye. Never mind the fact that she’d spent all morning choosing precisely which gown to wear, because it wasn’t every day that your brother got married and asked the Earl of Rockhurst to stand up with him.
Confident the bright capucine color of her silk gown would stop his gaze, Hermione tipped her head just so,
put her hand on her chin, glass raised in the other, and a come-hither light in her eyes. Exactly as she’d practiced in the mirror for most of the night.
Truly, how could he miss her?
“Minny, are you unwell?” Lady Viola Marlowe, her twelve-year-old sister asked, looking her sister up and down. “Oh, ’tis the color of that dress. You really shouldn’t wear nasturtium.”
“It isn’t nasturtium, it’s capucine.”
Vi shrugged. “Capucine, nasturtium. They are both orange, and they make you look very ill.”
Hermione cringed. What did a schoolgirl know of fashion? Orange, indeed! Besides, it was horribly difficult to affect just the right stance when one’s sister persisted in being a distraction. “This color is my signature.”
“Or your social ruin.” Vi glanced at the dress again and shuddered. “You said the same thing last Season about that dreadful shade of green. It made you look like you had the plague. No wonder you had only one offer.”
“It wasn’t green,” Hermione corrected, “but pistachio. And I had two offers.”
Vi shook her head, a mischievous grin on her face as she rose up on her toes and let her gaze follow Hermione’s until it fell on the Earl of Rockhurst. “Now I understand. It isn’t your orange dress that has you looking so ill, but
him.
”
Hermione flinched. It was true. Whenever she found herself in the earl’s vicinity, her stomach had the nasty habit of turning in knots.
Not that Viola was about to help matters. “Oh, by the way, did you know that when you pose like that your eyes are crossed.”
Crossed?
Hermione wavered. Her eyes certainly were not crossed.
Viola grinned. “You might as well relax, he isn’t looking over here.”
Hermione glanced in the man’s direction and found him engaged in conversation with Lord Boxley. “Oh, jiminy!” she cursed softly, and dropping her hand down to cover her stomach, hoping that would settle the butterflies there.
“I don’t see why you are so violently in love with Rockhurst—he doesn’t even know you exist,” Viola said, settling in to make her unwanted presence permanent. “And he won’t ever know it if you keep back here like some awkward wallflower.”
Doing her best to ignore her, Hermione struck a new pose. It was more daring than her last, but since her previous one had failed…
“Do you want me to fetch him over? I could do that for you.” Viola’s bright eyes sparkled with mischief as she cleared her throat and shook her hair back from her face. “My dear Lord Rockhurst, may I introduce my sister, Lady Hermione Marlowe, who happens to be so terribly and violently in love with you, I daresay she’d quite happily throw herself in front of a mail coach to gain your favor.” Viola paused, her fingers tapping against her quaking lips. “But then she’d be quite flat and rather unattractive, don’t you think?”
What had their mother been thinking allowing
Viola downstairs for the wedding, letting her mix about in company where she could say something or do something that would embarrass the entire family?
Just like she was doing this very minute.
But much to Hermione’s growing chagrin, Vi’s opinions didn’t stop there. “I find the earl rather dreadful—like one of those moping fellows in those French novels Mother adores, but I do like his dog.” Her sister glanced up at her. “What is its name?”
“Rowan,” Hermione supplied. She was, by all accounts, an expert on every matter concerning the Earl of Rockhurst.
“Rowan,” Vi repeated. “I thought I might go down and see if cook has an extra bone for the dear thing. Now
he
has a noble look about him, more so than the earl. And far more handsome.”
Hermione slanted a glance at her sister. “You’re comparing the Earl of Rockhurst to his wolfhound?” Oh, it was almost too much to bear. Really, what did a child still in the schoolroom know of such things? “The Earl of Rockhurst is the most handsome man in London, I’ll have you know.” Gritting her teeth together, she vowed to keep her pose despite Viola’s annoying presence, which her sister maintained with the same steely determination of a Beefeater at the Tower.
Yet, Hermione could grit her teeth together for only so long. “Vi, isn’t your governess looking for you? Or should I tell Mother that you are annoying the guests and see you sent back upstairs
where you belong
?”
Viola sighed, unperturbed by her sister’s threats. “I
don’t see why you just don’t marry Hustings and be done with all this.”
Marry Hustings? Not that her mother hadn’t been saying the very same thing just this morning, but Lord Hustings? There wasn’t anything wrong with the young baron, it was just that he wasn’t…
him.
Hermione slanted a glance over at Viola that she hoped would quell her little sister. “Leave me be.”
“Can’t.” She nodded toward the punch table. “Mother sent me over here. She wants you to make sure that Cousin Florinda doesn’t drink any more champagne. She’s quite squiffed as it is, and much more and she’ll be singing ‘Shule Aroon’ from the tabletops.”
“Squiffed? I shudder to think what Mother would say if she heard you use such a word. Wherever did you hear it?”
“From you,” Vi said oh-so-smugly. “You were telling India Buxton just the other afternoon that Griffin is forever coming home quite
squiffed
and that—”
“Yes, yes, fine,” Hermione said.
“That is squiffed, isn’t it?” Viola asked, nodding her head toward Cousin Florinda, who was holding court at the punch table, a half-filled glass in each hand and her hat precariously tipped to one side, as she sloshed back and forth like the sherry in her cups.
“Unfortunately, yes,” Hermione agreed, wishing Cousin Florinda wasn’t
their
cousin.
Sometimes being a Marlowe was a dreadful trial.
As if on cue, their mother, the Countess of Walbrook, came blowing across the room in her usual blowsy and
dramatic way, bowling over those in her path and tossing kisses to those she noticed.
She might be a Marlowe only by marriage, but there were days when she was the most Marlowest of all.
“Dears! Oh, there you are!” Lady Walbrook called out as she came careening toward her daughters. The countess was in a capital mood—and why shouldn’t she? Her house was overflowing with guests, her son married, and only four more children to match. “Such a triumphant day. Though I wish your father was here. I daresay he’d approve of Charlotte wholeheartedly.”
Lord Walbrook had left the family ten years earlier on a scientific study to the South Seas. Periodically they received letters and crates of treasures from him, but he was more stranger than family member now, though to his countess it was as if he’d merely gone around the corner to the tobacconist.
Lady Walbrook fluttered her hands at a passing baroness, then glanced over at her daughters. “Whatever is wrong with you, Hermione? You look positively yellow!”
“Capucine,” Vi corrected.
Hermione ignored her sister, who she knew was most likely tossing one of her infamous, “I-told-you-so” looks in her direction. “I am well,
Maman
,” she said, using the French designation her mother preferred.
The countess glanced about. “Of course, ’tis the light back here. Why it makes you look positively ancient. Now come out here where you can be seen. And you as well, Viola. Mingle, girls. Meet our guests. And don’t worry about Cousin Florinda, she’s moved on to
the sherry and we all know she never sings when she drinks sherry.”
“No, she just starts flirting with men half her age,” Hermione muttered under her breath.
“Whatever did you say, Minny?” her mother asked in her usual distracted flutter. “I fear I was trying to decide if that is Uncle Howel over at the sideboard filling his pockets with ham or the silver.”
“I believe it is a combination of both,” Vi offered.
Lady Walbrook shrugged her shoulders and turned back toward her daughters. “What a perfect crush when one can’t even distinguish the full extent of Uncle Howel’s sins from across the room! And so auspicious for Sebastian and dear, dear Charlotte to have so many people come to wish them merry.”
Viola nodded in agreement. “But really, Mother, shouldn’t you be concerned about the silver? There are so many strange people here. Why just a few minutes ago I saw the oddest pair—”
“Dearest child,” her mother said, drawing them both close and propping them up to their best advantage as Lord Hustings and his mother strolled past. “We don’t call our guests ‘odd’—for indeed most of them are family. Though how it is your father’s relations always seem to know when the larder is opened up and the sherry casks tapped, I’ll never know. Brings them out in hordes, but we must be accommodating.” She gave Viola and Hermione a none-so-subtle shove into the crush. “Smile girls, ’tis a happy day.” She bustled off, greeting one and all with her bright countenance and affectionate manners.
“Rockhurst is that way and Lord Hustings is over there,” Viola whispered, nudging Hermione in the earl’s direction. “I’m off to the kitchen to find a bone for Rowan.”
That is,
Hermione mused,
if Uncle Howel hasn’t gotten there first and pocketed them all.
Though she took another furtive glance in the earl’s direction, she turned instead toward her friends, Miss India Buxton and Lady Thomasin Winsley. At least there she would find an appreciative and sympathetic audience for her capucine gown and new pose. But on her first step, her slipper nudged something on the floor, and glancing down, she spied a ring there and knelt to pick it up.
I’ve seen this before,
she realized as she stood up, trying to remember where it was she’d seen it. Then it occurred to her. Why, it was Charlotte’s ring! The one her friend had inherited from her great-aunt not a fortnight earlier.
Well, Charlotte wouldn’t want to lose this,
Hermione thought as she slid the ring on her finger for safekeeping.
Immediately it grew warm, and she considered pulling it off, for the uncanny heat made her dizzy. Oh, she was being foolish, she realized, for it was simply this dreadful crush making her unsteady. Taking a deep breath, she smoothed her hands over her gown, but still her hand, her entire body trembled.
And she knew the real reason why. If she went to return the ring to Charlotte, it would bring her right into Rockhurst’s company, for he was even now chatting with the bridal pair.
Hermione watched him offering yet another toast to Sebastian and Charlotte’s happiness, and Hermione couldn’t help herself. A bolt of desire sent her heart beating wildly.
How she longed for him. Dreamed of him in ways that no proper miss should. But she did. And she didn’t care if Viola teased her over her infatuation.
Taking another glance at the Earl of Rockhurst, Hermione took a deep breath and started walking toward him.
Oh, if only…Oh, how I wish…
But then in the middle of her starry-eyed dream came a bolt of reality that stopped her wish in its tracks.
“I wish I were on yonder hill…
” sang the bright Irish lilt of Cousin Florinda.
“Oh, botheration!” Hermione cursed softly.
She’s gotten into the champagne again.
If she didn’t hurry, Florinda would be done with “
Shule Aroon”
and move on to her favorite ditty about the drunken Scot and his kilt.
Flitting one last glance at the earl’s Roman features and broad shoulders, she sighed and started toward her cousin.
Meanwhile, her unfinished wish hung in the air, trembling and waiting to be completed, but it wasn’t to be.
Not yet.
If she had known the power hovering just overhead, Hermione might not have cared a whit what Cousin Florinda was about to sing next. She would have stood stock-still and carefully constructed a wish that would
bring her heart’s desire as readily as Cousin Florinda could be counted on to make a cake of herself.
But Hermione was a Marlowe. And her wish would come from the same unbidden passionate nature that had Cousin Florinda downing champagne and regaling the crowd with another verse.
“I wish, I wish, I wish in vain
I wish I had my heart again…”