The Second Seduction of a Lady (4 page)

“Country society! Men with red faces who talk about horses, and their devilishly plain daughters. None of them ever reads a book or travels farther than Bath.”

“You didn’t find Miss Brotherton plain,” Max said, rather desperately.

Robert’s face brightened. “She’s a beauty. But she’s a lady, Max. The kind of girl one has to wed, if you get my meaning.”

“Indeed, Robert. You can’t, er, dally with Miss Brotherton, and I don’t suppose you’re looking to marry at your age.” He had an inspiration. “But a flirtation with a pretty girl of gentle birth can be a very pleasant experience and a way to idle away the time you must spend in the country.”

He brushed aside a twinge of compunction. Caro Brotherton had a brother and a mother to watch over her, not to mention her very own dragon, Miss Eleanor Hardwick. Trying to get by the guards would give Robert something to do other than gaming. And Max was happy to help, by distracting the dragon.

C
alling the next day on Caro’s friend, the novel-reading Lucy Markham, Eleanor and Caro found Lucy, the younger Markham children, and their governess in the garden, entertaining Robert Townsend and his three friends. Since Caro naturally wished to remain in such enthralling company, Eleanor went into the house alone to call on Mrs. Markham. The Markhams were friendly souls, fond of visiting and being visited. The morning room was populated by several ladies and, looking quite at home and the center of attention, Max Quinton.

After the expected flurry of greetings among the ladies, her hostess presented Mr. Quinton to Eleanor.

“Miss Hardwick and I are old friends,” he said, unabashed by the cold look she shot at him.

All the ladies looked interested, the younger and unmarried ones faintly annoyed.

“We’ve met.”

“Once we knew each other quite well.”

She was infuriated to feel her cheeks grow hot. His sly look told her that by “once” he meant on one particular occasion. The dastard.

“I am happy to meet you on dry land,” he continued. “Pray join me on this sofa. I shall feel much safer if you are seated.”

Miss Markham looked baffled. “Whatever can you mean, Mr. Quinton?”

“Last time I met Miss Hardwick I suffered an unfortunate accident.”

“And the time before, I did,” Eleanor snapped under her breath. She turned her attention firmly to her hostess. “How are you, ma’am? Over the sniffles, I trust. Summer colds can be difficult to shake.”

“Quite recovered, dear Miss Hardwick. Thank you for asking. Pray come and sit beside me and Mrs. Walpole and tell me how Mrs. Brotherton does. Will you take tea?”

Her hostess’s intervention was on her eldest daughter’s behalf. Miss Markham appeared highly interested in Mr. Quinton, and her cousin, Miss Ansty, was her rival for his attentions. Sitting between the two young ladies, Max seemed to be enjoying himself hugely. Luckily they had watchful parents to stop them falling for the seductive blandishments that she knew only too well he’d possessed. Still possessed. She despised herself for still finding him appealing.

He was a man comfortable in his own skin. A countryman through and through, he would never be mistaken for a man of fashion. His broadcloth coat in pine green and buff buckskin breeches were plain and only discreetly hinted at his powerful figure. As Eleanor had reason to know, the hints did not deceive. He responded to the sallies of his youthful admirers with sense laced with humor that would charm the birds out of the trees, or a lady out of her virtue.

Mrs. Markham’s chatter about the ailments, major and minor, real and imaginary, of their neighbors taxed Eleanor’s intellect so little she found herself sneaking blink-length glances in his direction far too often. Eventually her luck ran out and he caught her looking. For an endless moment his blue gaze held hers with the illusion of warmth and longing. For illusion it was. Max’s affection had never been anything else.

She turned her neck sharply. Mrs. Markham had said something that required a reply. “How very disagreeable, ma’am.”

Unfortunately she’d lost the thread of the conversation and failed to notice that the subject had changed from weaknesses of the body to those of the heart.

“Oh no! A most happy occasion. Her mother informs me it is a love match.”

“A love match!” Mrs. Walpole, the parson’s wife, entered the lists with gusto. “They always lead to trouble.”

“Surely not,” said Mrs. Markham. “I would desire them above all for my girls.”

“Love is all very well, but may not last. A woman is well advised to look for a gentleman who is able to keep her and her children in a suitable state. And a man needs a wife of sense who can forward his endeavors.” Mrs. Walpole, Eleanor remembered, was the daughter of a bishop and fully intended that her husband should attain an equal status. Or higher. She suspected that a diocese was too small a pond for the lady. She desired a
see
. “You seem a young woman of sense, Miss Hardwick. What is your opinion?”

“I believe all our actions should be governed by rationality,” Eleanor said.

Mrs. Markham shook her head. “Naturally I don’t advocate a rash or unequal match, but marriage without mutual esteem…”

“Mutual esteem is one thing but love is dangerous.” The parson’s wife delivered her opinion in a stentorian manner that would not have disgraced her husband’s pulpit. Her raised voice—and the magic word love—attracted the attention of the younger ladies and their quarry. “What say you, Mr. Quinton? Pray give us the gentleman’s perspective. Do you not agree with Miss Hardwick that matrimony is best entered rationally?”

He sent Eleanor a quizzical look, before answering the other lady. “I cannot be held to be an expert on the topic, ma’am.”

“Would you not wish a wife to assist you in your ambitions?”

“I’m not sure what you have in mind. I am a horse breeder and I cannot see how a wife would help me find a Derby winner, unless she was an expert on horseflesh and an authority on the bloodlines of the great stallions.”

“I am ever so fond of horses,” Miss Markham interjected. Eleanor doubted the girl, who had a nervous disposition, had ever mounted anything more spirited than a fat pony.

“Pish,” Mrs. Walpole said. “That’s not what I mean. I’m sure Mr. Quinton knows his own business and needs no interference from a wife. I would never think of telling Mr. Walpole what to think about the Scriptures or how to write his sermon. But a wise wife can help a gentleman cultivate the favor of those with influence.”

Misses Ansty and Markham tried to look wise and capable of cultivating influence.

“You make an excellent point,” he said. “Five years ago in Sussex, I had the good fortune to meet the Earl of Egremont, whose Assassin won the Derby in ’82. Exactly at the same time and place I met Miss Hardwick.”

Four pairs of female eyes turned with fascination or resentment in Eleanor’s direction. “A mere coincidence, I assure you,” she said, infuriated by the heat in her cheeks. “I had nothing to do with Mr. Quinton’s meeting Lord Egremont.”

“I didn’t mean that you did,” he said with spurious innocence. What
did
he mean, then?

Mrs. Walpole charged back into the fray. “It’s high time a man like you was wed.”

“I agree.” The four pairs of eyes swiveled back to him and grew round. Eleanor forced her hands to rest still in her lap and her face to remain bland. “I would like to be wed,” he continued, “but I haven’t yet found a lady who both shares my sentiments about marriage and returns them.”

Miss Markham sighed. Miss Ansty, daringly, placed a hand on his arm. “Oh, Mr. Quinton!” she said in an unnaturally husky voice. “Please explain yourself.”

Max, looking odiously smug, visibly relaxed between his two faithful handmaidens. “I wouldn’t look for a lady to know more about horses than I do…”

“How could she?” Miss Ansty said with a triumphant look at her cousin.

“…But I would want her to be interested in the subject, better still share my feelings and opinions.”

Eleanor thought of her father and his obsession with tracing the antediluvian flora of the ancient world. She wasn’t sure the tedium of the subject hadn’t hastened her mother to the grave. It certainly drove her, Eleanor, out of the house.

“How charming for her, Mr. Quinton,” she said sweetly. And refused to remember that she’d enjoyed hearing him talk about his work, displaying intelligence and knowledge without long-winded self-satisfaction.

His eyes twinkled. “I hope so.”

“A lady likes to be listened to, also,” said Mrs. Walpole.

“And I would wish to wed a lady who was able to converse on her own business with sense and intelligence.”

“Your condescension overwhelms me,” Eleanor said.

“No need for that, Miss Hardwick. I have the highest respect for the fair sex.”

Eleanor’s jaw clenched. Smiles and soft sighs told her that Max held the other ladies in the palm of his hand.

“For truly,” he concluded, “what I seek is the marriage of true minds. I will settle for nothing less.” His gaze passed around the company, settling only briefly on her, not long enough to draw attention. His expression held such sincerity that she didn’t know what to think. A craven desire to believe him fought the reason that told her he was applying his cynical powers of persuasion on her, and every other woman present.

“What of fortune, sir?” asked the practical parson’s wife.

“Since my own wealth is modest, it would ill become me to demand more from my wife.”

“And beauty?” asked Miss Ansty, the prettier of the two cousins. “Do you seek beauty in a wife?”

Max pretended to give the matter grave thought, “pretend” being the correct word. Eleanor realized she knew him well enough to detect the approach of an outrageous statement. “It is of the utmost importance,” he said, “that I find a lady beautiful. She may not be handsome to every eye, but to me she must be lovely, or how could I live with her in the mutual joy that is the essence of marriage?”

Mrs. Markham looked slightly shocked. The girls looked confused.

“Mr. Quinton,” said the vicar’s wife, “despite the good sense you display, I should remind you that there are unmarried ladies present.” But she was smiling and Eleanor found herself wishing the lady well in her ambition to be Mrs. Bishop Walpole. Despite her wonderfully sensible views on love, she guessed that the Walpoles were a contented couple. One of the few. Eleanor, being a reasonable woman, would never deny that
some
marriages were happy. Merely that the odds were unfavorable.

“I apologize, ma’am,” Max replied. “But I’d like to say that Mr. Walpole is a very fortunate man.”

The stalwart vicar’s wife almost simpered. Max Quinton had made another conquest, despite a reference to the marriage bed such as Eleanor had never heard in mixed company. Unwillingly she was a little thrilled that the object of this slightly indecent remark was herself. For now his eyes settled on her. He was sending the message that he still found her desirable, despite her unpretty thirty-year-old face. She reached for her teacup, stirring in more sugar than she usually liked.

No, she wasn’t shocked, but she did blush. She blushed for the memories that gripped her of the gardens at Petworth Park, when she and Max had walked down to the lake during the ball that marked the conclusion of a week of horseracing. The details of that hour were a blur; all she remembered were her own feelings. For once, recollection of delight overcame the bitterness of the aftermath. The intensity in his unwavering gaze evoked the ecstasy of that summer night. She wanted to close her eyes and absorb the scent of roses, the ripples of water in the moonlight, the song of the nightingale. She wished she was alone so she could revel in the heat that set flesh and skin glowing and swirled to a delicious ache in her secret core. She yearned to be touched and filled and, not for the first time, inwardly railed against the injustice that forbade satisfaction unless it came with the bondage of matrimony.

What would these innocent girls and proper ladies think if they knew that one of their number, Mrs. Brotherton’s upright spinster cousin, had once, in a moment of madness, participated in the “mutual joy” Mr. Quinton referred to?
With
Mr. Quinton.

To her disgust, she sat on the sofa in Mrs. Markham’s drawing room and wanted him still. Had she no pride? Remember what happened afterward, she told herself sternly. Remember the next morning’s humiliation.

F
ive years earlier, Max had wanted her far more than he wanted the two hundred guineas in Sir George Ashdown’s betting pool for kissing his wife’s prissy, irritating spinster cousin. As he quickly learned, Eleanor was a thorough delight. Not at all irritating, far from prissy, and he couldn’t imagine why she had remained a spinster.

Well, she wouldn’t remain one for long. Max wasn’t a rich man; the estate he’d inherited from his father was small. But its location near Newmarket was an advantage for a horse breeder. He’d made several sales during the week at Petworth, including one to Lord Egremont himself. With the promise of future patronage, he was in a position to take a wife. And while he wasn’t altogether happy about its source, the two hundred would be helpful for a man starting a family.

An ill-fated decision. As he learned later, ladies did not appreciate being the subjects of wagers. Those gathered in Mrs. Markham’s drawing room today would certainly disapprove. What a fool he’d been. He should at least have told Eleanor about the bet.

His sin of omission was only the first mistake he made the night of the Petworth ball. He had tossed back another glass of wine before inviting Miss Hardwick to sit out their next dance and walk in the gardens instead. He wasn’t drunk, but any man needed a little Dutch courage to propose marriage.

There could be few places on earth more beautiful than Petworth Park by moonlight. No expense of money or skill had been spared in making it an earthly paradise. Benches in plenty were provided for the weary visitor to rest while he admired the vistas. Had Max and Eleanor been sitting on cold stone or hard wooden boards, decorum might have been maintained. But his genius discovered a grass bank surrounded by shrubbery, including a tall scrambling rose bush possessing profuse white blooms of peculiar sweetness.