Tempted By the Night (3 page)

“He’ll be right back,” her friend, Miss India Buxton said, nodding toward the punch table, where a young lordling was securing a cup of tepid lemonade with great flair and chivalry.

“Who?” Hermione asked.

“Lord Hustings,” Lady Thomasin Winsley said. “Gracious heavens, Minny, you’ve forgotten him already, haven’t you?”

“I don’t see how you could,” India declared. “He’s all but asked for your hand.”

“I don’t want him to ask for it,” Hermione said. “He’s so…so…”

“Dull,” Thomasin said, nodding in agreement.

Oh, ever so dull. Hermione was afraid that was about the kindest thing she could say about the baron. But sadly, the Lord Hustings of the world were usually what was left to ladies like her and Thomasin and India—in their third year of being “out.”

This Season could well prove to be their last if they didn’t find matches soon. And with it nearing June, there was precious little time left to find the man who
could send shivers down their spines
and
satisfy their parents’ desires to see them well matched.

“I do believe Miss Burke is still smarting from how you trounced her in archery this afternoon,” Thomasin said, changing the subject, because in truth, none of them wanted to face the future as Lady Hustings.

India tipped her nose in the air. “I thought it was dreadful the way she kept coughing every time you had to shoot.”

“A dreadful cheat,” Thomasin agreed, nodding in the direction of where the infamous heiress and her friends had established their camp. No wings or alcoves for Miss Lavinia Burke. She and her bosom bows always held center stage at Almack’s. “See how the Dewmont sisters are doing their best to rally Lavinia’s spirits? Why, she looks as sour as if she’d drunk the entire bowl of lemonade. What a bully afternoon it was, Minny.”

India fluttered her fan as she spoke. “When your last shot hit the bull’s-eye, you should have seen her face! Oh, the sight of her losing to you was well worth being dragged to that dull party.”

“I did like beating her,” Hermione confessed. “She is so smug and affected. Why, I heard her telling those dim-witted Dewmonts that she threw Sebastian over and that he married Charlotte in spite!”

“Anyone who sees how your brother looks at Charlotte knows exactly why he married her.” Lady Thomasin sighed. “I wish a man would look at me
that
way.”

Hermione and India nodded in agreement.

“Oh, dear heavens,” Thomasin said, holding her hand up to cover her mouth and keep herself from laughing aloud. “Poor Lord Hustings!”

They looked up to find the man traveling through the crowd in the wrong direction.

“I knew he’d get lost,” Hermione said, rising up on her toes and watching the young baron navigate his way through the crowd while cautiously carrying two cups of punch. “Shall we go fetch him before he spills on someone, or just wait for him to realize we are on this side of the room?”

But India’s answer was a gasping, strangled sound. Hermione turned to her to find her friend’s mouth flapping like a trout.

Thomasin appeared in the same state of shock. “Oh. My. Goodness,” she managed to gasp, her eyes wide with amazement as she gazed somewhere over Hermione’s shoulder. “You are never going to believe this, Minny.”

India blinked and tried again to speak, her mouth wavering open and shut as if she couldn’t quite find the words to describe the sight before her.

“What is it?” Hermione asked, glancing over her shoulder and only seeing the narrow, tall figure of Lord Battersby behind her. Certainly his arrival wouldn’t have India looking like she’d swallowed her aunt’s parrot.

“Oh, let me tell her,” Thomasin was saying, rising up on her toes.

“No, let me,” India said as she finally found her voice. “I saw
him
first.”

Him.
Hermione shivered. There was only one
him
in the
ton
as far as she as concerned.

Rockhurst.

Oh, but her friends had to be jesting, for the earl would never make an appearance at Almack’s. She glanced at both their faces, fully expecting to find some telltale sign of mirth, some twitch of the lips that would give way to a full-blown giggle.

But there were none. Just the same, wide-eyed gaping expression that she now noticed several other guests wore.

Turning around slowly, Hermione’s jaw dropped as well.

Nothing in all her years out could have prepared her for the sight of the Earl of Rockhurst arriving at Almack’s.

“Jiminy!” she gasped, her hand going immediately to her quaking stomach. Oh, heavens, she shouldn’t have had that extra helping of pudding at supper, for now she feared the worst.

And here she thought she’d be safe at Almack’s.

“I didn’t believe you,” she whispered to India.

“I still don’t believe it myself,” India shot back. “Whatever is he doing here?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” Thomasin replied, “but I’m just glad Mother insisted we come tonight if only for the crowing rights we will have tomorrow over everyone who isn’t here.”

“Oh, this is hardly the gown to catch his eye,” Hermione groaned. “It is entirely the wrong shade of capucine,” she declared, running her hands over
the perfectly fashionable, perfectly pretty gown she’d chosen.

Thomasin laughed. “Minny, stop fussing. The three of us could be stark naked and posed like a trio of wood nymphs, and he wouldn’t notice us.”

“True enough,” India agreed. “You have to see that you are too respectable to garner his fancy.”

“He fancied Charlotte,” Hermione shot back, trying to ignore the little bit of jealousy that niggled in her heart as she said it.

“Oh, I suppose he did for about an hour,” India conceded, “but you have to admit, Charlotte was a bit odd the last few weeks. Not herself at all.”

Hermione nodded in agreement. There had been something different about Charlotte. Ever since…ever since her great-aunt Ursula had died and she’d inherited…Hermione glanced down at her gloved hand. Inherited the very ring she’d found yesterday…

Beneath her glove, she swore the ring warmed, even quivered on her finger, like a trembling bell that foretold of something ominous just out of reach.

“Did you hear of his latest escapade?” Lady Thomasin was whispering. There was no one around them to hear, but some things just couldn’t be spoken in anything less than the awed tone of a conspiratorial hush.

India nodded. “About his wager with Lord Kramer
—”

“Oh, hardly that,” Thomasin scoffed. “Everyone has heard about that. No, I am speaking of his renewed interest in Mrs. Fornett. Apparently she was seen with him at Tattersall’s when everyone knows she is under
Lord Saunderton’s protection.” The girl paused, then heaved a sigh. “Of course there will be a duel. There always is in these cases.” Lady Thomasin’s cousin had once fought a duel, and so she considered herself quite the expert on the subject.

“Pish posh,” Hermione declared. “He isn’t interested in her.”

“I heard Mother telling Lady Gidding, that she’d heard it from Lady Owston who’d had it directly from Lord Filton that he was at Tatt’s with Mrs. Fornett.” Thomasin rocked back on her heels, her brows arched and her mouth set as if that was the final word on the subject.

“That may be so, but I heard Lord Delamere tell my brother that he’d seen Rockhurst going into a truly dreadful house in Seven Dials. The sort of place no gentleman would even frequent. With truly awful women inside.”

Hermione wrinkled her nose. “And what was Lord Delamere doing outside this sinful den?”

“I daresay driving past it to get to the nearest gaming hell. He’s gone quite dice mad and nearly run through his inheritance. Or so my brother likes to say.”

“And probably squiffed, I’d wager,” Hermione declared, forgetting her admonishment to Viola about using such phrases. “I don’t believe any of it. Whatever is the matter with Society these days when all they can get on with is making up gossip about a man who doesn’t deserve it?”

“Not deserve it?” Lady Thomasin gaped. “The Earl of Rockhurst is a terrible bounder. Everyone knows it.”

“Well, I think differently.” Hermione crossed her arms over her chest and stood firm, even as her stomach continued to twist and turn.

“Why you continue to defend him, I know not,” India said, glancing over where the earl stood with his cousin, Miss Mary Kendell. “He’s wicked and unrepentant.”

“I disagree.” Hermione straightened and took a measured glance at the man. “I don’t believe a word of any of it. The Earl of Rockhurst is a man of honor.”

Lady Thomasin snorted. “Oh, next you’ll be telling us he spends his night spooning broth to sickly orphans and bestowing food baskets to poor war widows.”

India laughed. “Oh, no, I think he’s like the mad earl in that book your mother told us not to read.” She shivered and leaned in closer to whisper. “You know the one…about the dreadful man who kidnapped all sorts of ladies and kept them in his attic? I’d wager if you were to venture into the earl’s attics, you’d find an entire harem!”

“Oh, of all the utter nonsense! How can you say such dreadful things about a man’s reputation?” Hermione argued. “The earl is a decent man, I just know it. And I’ll not let the Lord Delameres and the Lord Filtons of the world tell me differently.”

“Well, the only way to prove such a thing would be to follow him around all night—for apparently only seeing the truth with your own eyes will end this infatuation of yours, Hermione.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and set her shoulders. “I just might.”

“Yes, and you’d be ruined in the process,” Thomasin pointed out. “And don’t think he’ll marry you to save your reputation, when he cares nothing of his own.”

India snapped her fingers, her eyes alight with inspiration. “Too bad you aren’t cursed like the poor heroine in that book we borrowed from my cousin. Remember it?
Zoe’s Dilemma
…No, that’s not it.
Zoe’s Awful
…Oh, I don’t remember the rest of the title.”

“I do,” Lady Thomasin jumped in. “
Zoe or the Moral Loss of a Soul Cursed
.”

India sighed. “Yes, yes, that was it.”

Hermione gazed up at the ceiling. Only Thomasin and India would recall such a tale at a time like this. She glanced over at the earl, and then down at her gown. Oh, she should never have settled on this dress. It was too pumpkin and not enough capucine. How would he ever discover her now?

Thomasin continued, “You remember the story, Minny. At sunset, Zoe faded from sight so no one could see her. What I would give to have a night thusly.”

“Whatever for?” India asked. “You already know the earl is a bounder.”

Their friend got a devilish twinkle in her eye. “If I were unseen for a night, I’d make sure that Miss Lavinia Burke had the worst evening of her life. Why the next day, every gossip in London would be discussing what a bad case of wind she had, not to mention how clumsy she’s become, for I fear I’d be standing on her train every time she took a step.”

Hermione chuckled, while India burst out laughing.

“I do think you’ve considered this before,” Hermione said.

Thomasin grinned. “I might have.” Then she laughed as well. “If you were so cursed, Hermione, you could follow Rockhurst from sunset to sunrise, and then you’d see everyone is right about him.”

India made a more relevant point. “Then you could end this disastrous
tendré
you have for him and discover a more eligible
parti
before the Season ends.”

And your chances of a good marriage with them,
her statement implied, but being the bosom bow that India was, she wouldn’t say such a thing.

Still, Hermione wasn’t about to concede so easily. “More likely you would both have to take back every terrible thing you’ve ever said about him.”

“Or listen to your sorry laments over how wretchedly you’ve been deceived,” Thomasin shot back.

Hermione turned toward the earl. Truly no man could be so terribly wicked or so awful.

Oh, if only…

And then something odd happened. The ring warmed again on her finger…and quivered. Trembled on her hand as if nudging her, nay urging her, to continue.

“I wish…” Hermione said aloud, as if testing the words. “I wish I were a phantom from sunset to sunrise just like Lady Zoe so I could discover all of Lord Rockhurst’s secrets.”

Then she finished her wish with three silent words.

And he, mine.

Yet even as her wish tumbled from her lips and heart, the room around her spun, like London itself was tipping into the Thames.

Her hand fluttered to her brow, and Hermione closed her eyes. Whatever was wrong with her?

Her friends noticed her distress as well.

Thomasin caught her by the elbow and steadied her. “Minny! Are you ill?” She glanced around, most likely for Hermione’s mother, but then she gasped. “No! Miss Kendell and Lord Rockhurst are coming over here.”

Hermione swayed again, the room going from tipped to upside down.

“This isn’t another of your poses, is it?” India asked. “Because I wouldn’t recommend it right now. It makes you look positively bilious—”

“I think I’m going to be ill,” Hermione gasped, before covering her mouth with her hand.

“Not again!” Thomasin exclaimed. “Whatever is wrong with you that every time that man comes near, you toss up your accounts?”

India nodded. “Not in front of him. Not
here
.” What she meant was Almack’s.

Hermione swayed again, and a mighty buzzing filled her ears. Try as she might to regain her senses, she couldn’t. And her stomach…She should have known better than to have kippers
and
an extra helping of pudding. Now she was about to cast up her accounts. In Almack’s. Oh, she would be ruined!

“Whatever is wrong, Minny?” India asked. “Did you have more than one helping of pudding tonight?”

“Yes,” Hermione said, clutching her stomach, open
ing her eyes just enough to see that indeed, Thomasin was right. The earl was coming toward them.

Jiminy! He is so handsome, and so tall, and so…