The Pretenders (4 page)

I could hear him release his breath. “You heard about it, then?”

“A group of very impressionable young ladies got ahold of me in the ladies’ withdrawing room.”

His brows snapped together again. “You cannot credit what a hell my life has become since that damned poem was published, Deb. I should like to take that bounder Byron and wring his neck. Some people are even saying that he based that bloody stupid Conrad on me!”

I said practically, “From what the girls were saying, I gather you look like him. Surely that is not so very dreadful, Reeve. You know how impressionable young ladies are.”  I lifted my eyebrows. “In addition to which, you cannot expect to go around London behaving like some arrogant Renaissance prince without stirring up comment.”

What I did not mention, would never mention, were the other aspects of Reeve’s character that would inevitably lend themselves to comparison with a doomed, self-destructive, guilt-driven hero.

“I am not arrogant,” he said, outraged.

“Well you certainly looked arrogant tonight,” I shot back. ”You didn’t dance with anyone but me and Mama. You just leaned against the wall, with your arms crossed, and looked… looked… well—arrogant. You behave much better in the country.”

He finished his brandy and poured himself another glass. “Yes,” he said scornfully. “A fine gudgeon I should look if I made out that I was too good to dance with the likes of the squire’s daughters.”

I understood. It was precisely because the squire’s daughters, and the rest of our small village society, were so far beneath his social class that Reeve would not dream of insulting us. Here in London, among his peers, it was different.

He said, “Surely you can see now why it is impossible for me to marry one of those imbecile girls, Deb.”

I frowned. “But Reeve, there have to be other women you could court. Certainly the girls who accosted me in the ladies withdrawing room tonight can’t be the only eligible females in London!”

“They’re the only eligible females that I know,” Reeve said gloomily. ”This is the way it works, Deb.

Members of the
ton
trundle their seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds into London for a Season or two, and then, if the girls don’t get an offer, they’re brought back home so that the next daughter can have her chance.” He drank some more brandy. ”I really don’t want to marry a seventeen-year-old, Deb.”

I didn’t blame him. Such a marriage would be a disaster. Reeve was too complicated a man for a seventeen-year-old to handle.

I sipped my tea. “What about your friends? Don’t they have any sisters who would be suitable?”

He shook his head and put his glass down on the table with an audible click. He looked at me, his eyes glittering like black obsidian. “Do you have any notion of how beautiful you’ve turned out to be, Deb? I had no idea you were hiding so much potential under those dreadful clothes.”

I gave him a dangerous glare. “If I find your eyes on my bosom one more time, Reeve, I shall throw something at you.”

He grinned, the rare, carefree, joyous smile that made him look as young as his twenty-four years. “Do I make you nervous?”

“You make me uncomfortable,” I said.

“Good.”

I picked up a small pillow that was tucked in the side of my chair and threw it at him.

He ducked, and then he began to laugh.

“I wonder what Bernard will think of you?” he said. He took another swallow of brandy.

“He will probably think I’m a hoyden,” I replied.

“Well, it doesn’t matter what he thinks,” Reeve replied stubbornly. ”His stipulation was that I get married. He’s not in a position to complain about my choice.”

I said reluctantly, “I have to confess that I am not looking forward to meeting Lord Bradford.”

“I don’t blame you,” Reeve said bluntly. ”He’s a stick. But you can’t back out on me now, Deb. The notice is in the paper, and Bernard will probably be here tomorrow or the day after. Be brave, keep your chin up, and we’ll weather the storm together.”

“I hope so,” I said gloomily. ”Really, Reeve, I don’t know how I let you talk me into this.”

“You did it because you’re my best friend, and you didn’t want to let me down,” he said. He cocked one eyebrow. ”Also, you didn’t want to lose your rides on my hunters.” He handed me his glass, which was half-full of brandy. ”Here, have a shot. It will do you much more good than that mushy tea.”

I took the brandy and bolted it down. It made me cough, but the warmth burned its way all the way down to my belly.

“That
is
better,” I said.

“Come along,” he said. ’Time for bed. I’ll get you your candle and escort you upstairs.”

I stood up and my head spun a little. I staggered, and Reeve reached out to take my arm. “Whoa there, old girl,” he said. “All right?”

I took a deep breath. “Yes.”

Reeve escorted me to the door of my room. When we were standing there, just before I opened it to go in, he bent to give me a quick kiss on the cheek.

“Thank you, Deb,” he said gravely. ”I appreciate your help.”

I patted him on the shoulder. “What are friends for?” I said lightly, then turned and went into the pretty, chintz-covered safety of my room.

REEVE TOOK ME DRIVING IN THE PARK THE
following afternoon at the fashionable hour of five o’clock, and when we returned to the house it was to discover that Lord Bradford had arrived. The butler, Jerrnyn, informed us that Mama was giving him tea in the front drawing room.

“Courage, Deb,” Reeve muttered in my ear, as we turned toward the room in question to make our appearance before Reeve’s formidable trustee.

I had never seen Lord Bradford before, but I had certainly heard about him. He was Reeve’s father’s first cousin, a widower with a daughter and two sons, the eldest of whom was Reeve’s age. He owned a decent, unencumbered estate in Sussex, where he happily spent most of his time in country pursuits. His position in the peerage was not high, but his barony was of an old date. In short, I had always judged him to be exactly the sort of stolid, unremarkable, unimaginative man who would have no comprehension of the kind of devils that drove someone like Reeve.

I smoothed the already straight collar of my sky-blue driving dress. Three-quarters of the clothes Madame Dufand had made for me were blue. She had been quite insistent on matching the color of my eyes.

Reeve put his hand under my elbow, gave an encouraging squeeze, and together we went into the front drawing room of Lambeth House.

Mama was sitting on a green-silk-covered sofa dispensing tea to a powerful-looking, broad-shouldered man with a strong, square, blunt-featured face. He rose to his feet as soon as I came into the room.

“Hallo, Bernard,” Reeve said. ”I trust your journey was a pleasant one.”

“I made very good time,” Lord Bradford replied. He was not looking at Reeve, however, he was looking at me.

Reeve looked down at me also, a hint of mischief in his eyes. “Deb, allow me to present my cousin, Lord Bradford.” His eyes flicked to his trustee. “Bernard, this is Miss Deborah Woodly, who has done me the honor of consenting to be my bride.”

Lord Bradford approached me and took my gloved hand into his. His eyes were gray and steady and not quite two inches higher than my own. “I am very pleased to meet you, Miss Woodly,” he said gravely.

You could have searched the earth over and not have found a man more opposite to Reeve, I thought, as I smiled and murmured a polite response.

“Will you have some tea, Deborah?” Mama asked. ”And you, Reeve?”

“Of course,” I replied, going to sit beside Mama on the sofa. I wondered how long she had been stuck trying to entertain Lord Bradford on her own, poor thing.

Reeve took a cup from Mama and went to lean his shoulders against the green-silk-covered wall, next to the white-marble fireplace.

Lord Bradford went back to his chair and took a sip of his tea. “I was delighted to discover that you took my suggestion seriously, Reeve,” he said. “Surprised, but delighted.”

Reeve scowled. “You didn’t leave me much choice, did you, Bernard? I hope that I can count on your paying my Derby debts now.”

Lord Bradford looked like thunder. “This is hardly a tactful matter to be discussing in front of your future wife,” he said angrily.

“Oh, don’t worry about me, Lord Bradford,” I said with a sunny smile. ”Reeve and I understand each other perfectly.”

I found myself the object of a suspicious stare. “Just what do you mean by that, Miss Woodly?”

My mother’s gentle voice intruded. “Deborah only means that she understands that Reeve has an obligation to pay his gambling debts, Lord Bradford.” She gave him an extraordinarily sweet smile. “May I pour you some more tea?”

He was instantly distracted, holding out his cup to Mama and looking with undisguised pleasure at her lovely face.

“You are going to pay poor Reeve’s debts, aren’t you, Lord Bradford?” Mama said worriedly. ”He is quite anxious about them.”

Lord Bradford sipped his tea and ran his eyes from Reeve, who was standing against the wall, to me, sitting beside Mama. I thought I detected the faintest trace of suspicion in his gaze. “I said that I would pay his bills if he would get married, but he is not married yet”

Reeve catapulted away from the wall, spilling his tea on the Turkish carpet. “You said that you would pay my Derby debts if I became engaged! I cannot keep my creditors waiting any longer. Dammit, honor demands that those debts be paid immediately! You know that, Bernard!”

Lord Bradford scowled. “There are ladies present, Reeve. Do not swear.”

If Lord Bradford knew how often I had heard Reeve swear, he would probably have an apoplexy, I thought. I also thought that it was better not to mention that fact right now.

“Bernard,” Reeve said tightly, ”if you don’t pay those bills immediately, you will drive me to the moneylenders.”

“Don’t try to blackmail me, Reeve.” Coldly.

“It seems to me as if you are the one who is blackmailing me!” Hotly.

“Oh dear,” Mama said. Pitifully.

I said, “Well, if you are not going to pay Reeve’s debts, Lord Bradford, then it seems to me as if the whole point of our marriage has been nullified. We had better send a notice to the newspapers that we have made a mistake.”

Everyone’s attention swung to me.

“I don’t understand you, Miss Woodly,” Lord Bradford said. His voice was calm, but his gray eyes looked angry.

“It is very simple,” I said. ”Reeve is marrying me because he—very understandably!—wants to get control of his own money. For my part, Mama and I are not in the best of financial health, and such a marriage will benefit us also. However,”—and I fixed Lord Bradford with my most steely look—”our marriage is based on the assumption that it will benefit us both. I refuse to take advantage of poor Reeve if you refuse to hold to your end of the bargain.”

Silence fell on the drawing room. I took a sip of tea and shot a quick glance at Reeve. He winked.

I swallowed my tea, and said to Lord Bradford, “Reeve told me that you said you would pay his gaming debts if he became engaged. Did he misrepresent your words to me?”

To my infinite surprise, a touch of humor appeared at the corners of Lord Bradford’s mouth. “No, Miss Woodly, he did not.”

I allowed my eyes to widen questioningly. “Well then?”

“You cannot cry off from this engagement now,” Lord Bradford said. ”It would cause a scandal.”

I saw Reeve’s lips beginning to open, and I frowned at him.

“Then will you pay Reeve’s gambling debts?” I asked Lord Bradford.

“Yes,” that gentleman replied resignedly. ”I will pay Reeve’s gambling debts, Miss Woodly.” He turned to Reeve. ”Give me a list of the men to whom you owe money, and the amount of the sums, and I will see to it.”

Lord Bradford left shortly after tea. Mama invited him to take dinner with us and then accompany us to the Larchmont ball that evening, and he accepted. He was staying with his sister, not with us, which was a great relief to me. The thought of constantly playing mediator between Reeve and his trustee if Lord Bradford were actually living in the house was an exhausting thought.

“Good job, Deb,” Reeve said as soon as Lord Bradford was out the front door.

“What a thoroughly unpleasant man,” I said. ”For a dreadful moment there I thought he was going to go back on his word to you.”

“Oh, Bernard never actually goes back on his word,” Reeve said bitterly. ”The problem is that he is a master at shaping his words to mean something other than what you thought they meant.”

“I did not find Lord Bradford so unpleasant, Deborah,” Mama said. ”Indeed, until you and Reeve came in, his company was quite agreeable.”

I smiled at her. “No one could be disagreeable to you, Mama.”

Unbidden, the thought slipped into my mind of my father’s brother, John, and my half brother, Richard, both of whom had been far more than merely disagreeable to her. From the moment I had known that I would be coming to London I had wondered if I might run into one or the other of them.

Richard was a few years older than Reeve, and engaged to be married to the daughter of a viscount. What if he and his fiancée were in London?

I despised my half brother for his neglect of Mother and me for all these years, but once in a while I admitted to the truth that, deep down inside, part of me desired to meet my father’s other child. I wanted to tell him just what I thought of him, of course.

However bad he was, though, Richard’s perfidy paled when compared to that of my half uncle, my father’s younger brother, John. He was the one who had been named trustee of my father’s estate. He was the one who had forced Mother and me out of Lynly Manor. He was the one who was the deserving recipient of my unrelenting hatred.

One day I would like to meet
him
, I thought. And he had better not be standing near the edge of a cliff when I did.

Lord Bradford arrived for dinner with his sister and her husband, and we actually had a pleasant, civilized meal together. Reeve sat at the head of the polished-mahogany table from which all the leaves had been removed, and Mama sat opposite him. Lord Bradford and I faced each other across the middle, with Mr. and Mrs. Stucky beside us.

The dining room of Lambeth House was elegant without being overwhelming. It was less than a quarter the size of the dining room at Ambersley, and the yellow-silk wall and drapes set off the richly polished mahogany furniture most effectively. There was but one crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling, not three like the ones that hung over the twenty-foot-long table at Ambersley, and I found it an altogether more comfortable room than the one I had seen the single time Reeve had given me a tour of his country estate.

The dinner could have been better. The vegetables were fresh, but the lamb was overcooked and so was the fish. I was hungry, though, and even overcooked meat tasted good to someone who was not accustomed to having too much of it.

Lord Bradford pushed his food around on his plate and looked disgusted. “Your chef leaves something to be desired, Reeve,” he said.

Reeve, who had a stomach of iron, shrugged. “That will be something that Deb can attend to,” he said, giving me a wicked look.

“Hmmm,” I said.

“Do you have your own sheep and cattle, Lord Bradford?” Mama asked.

Lord Bradford smiled at her. “That I do, Mrs. Woodly. In fact, I may say that I quite probably have the best herd of sheep in all of Sussex.”

“How splendid,” Mama replied. ”I know very little of sheep myself, but I do love to garden.”

The elder members of the dinner party conversed genteelly while Reeve and I listened. When finally dinner was over, it was time to leave for the Larchmont dance.

“This is a larger ball than the one we attended last night,” Reeve informed me. ”In fact, it will probably be the last big crush of the Season. Everyone who is still in town will be there.”

I nodded, not quite so nervous as I had been the night before. This evening I was wearing a cream-colored gown with blue-satin trim around the high waist and the puffed sleeves. My hair was gathered high on the crown of my head and allowed to fall in ringlets down my back. The bloody ringlets had taken almost an hour to create, and they tickled the nape of my neck. Reeve told me that they looked just the thing, however, so I supposed the effort was worth it.

This time in London wasn’t going to last forever, after all. I figured that I would be home in my own familiar village before another week had passed.

Lord Bradford and Reeve were waiting for Mama and me in the drawing room when we came downstairs. They looked at us.

“Reeve, I do believe we will be escorting the two most beautiful ladies at the dance this evening,” Lord Bradford said gallantly. He was dressed in conventional evening dress of black coat, white neckcloth, and knee breeches, and he looked like a stocky farmer in disguise. Reeve, on the other hand, looked utterly magnificent in his well-cut clothes.

I braced myself to cope with that silly Corsair business again tonight.

Mama and Lord Bradford rode in the carriage belonging to Mr. and Mrs. Stucky, leaving Reeve and me to follow in the Cambridge town chaise. As we traveled toward Grosvenor Square where the party was to be held, I said to my erstwhile fiancée “I think it would be a good idea for you to dance with a few other ladies beside Mama and me tonight, Reeve. You are only adding to this foolish Corsair image by standing around looking haughty, you know.”

He was sitting in one of the corners of the chaise, gazing out into the street, and at my words he turned to look at me. The sky was still light with the softness of twilight, and I could see his face clearly. “There isn’t anyone else I want to dance with,” he said grumpily.