Educating Caroline (13 page)

9

A
nd then she was gone.

As unexpectedly as she’d appeared, she was gone. And Braden was left to wonder whether or not everything that had seemed to occur while she’d been there had, in actual fact, happened. Had this very young, seemingly guileless girl actually asked him to teach her how to make love? And had he, in fact, actually said no?

What in God’s name had he been thinking?

He was still asking himself that question when Weasel came bustling in, his thin face fairly atwitch with questions. But all the secretary said was, “Got her off all right, her and her maid. Not such a bad sort, that Violet. You did lay it on a bit thick, though. Practically turned her into a bleedin’ anarchist with all that power to the people tripe.”

Braden stood in the same spot in which he’d been frozen since she’d sailed from the room. He’d watched the street below as the girl’d stepped into her carriage, a neat, unpretentious little contraption, with a set of healthy-looking grays to pull it. Then, after the carriage had pulled away, he’d stared at the spot where it had stood.

And yet, even though Braden had seen the girl leave, he couldn’t help but continue to feel her presence in the room. Not that he could smell her, the way he could Jacquelyn, whenever she vacated a place, always leaving behind the cloying rose-scented odor of her perfume. And there were no telltale bits of plumage floating about, either. Just a faint hint of something . . . something not quite the same as it had been before she’d come in, like ripples on the surface of a pond after a pebble had been thrown into it.

It was not particularly settling, this feeling that a woman who’d left the room was still there, somehow.

“So.” Weasel lowered himself onto the leather couch, and drew a cigar from his waistcoat pocket. “What’d she want, then?”

Braden shook his head. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

Weasel chuckled. “She don’t want you to shoot nobody for’er, does she?”

“Certainly not. She’s quite opposed to violence, particularly any involving pistols.”

“Oh. Too bad.” Having thoroughly licked his cigar all over, Weasel inserted it into his mouth, and lit it. “Well, looks as if I owe Snake a quid.” Weasel puffed on his cigar. “I bet that’s what she come for. What
did
she want, then? And did you get anything out of her about what she might’ve seen the other night?”

“Indeed,” Braden said, with thoughtful care. “She claims to have seen Jacquelyn in a highly compromising situation with a gentleman other than myself.”

Weasel brightened. “She got a name for you?”

“She says she does.”

“So.” Weasel spoke slowly. To an outsider, it might have sounded as if he were conversing with someone slow-witted, but that was not a term that came to mind when Braden Granville was involved. Weasel was speaking slowly because he’d learned, over the years, that it was best to choose his words carefully when “Dead Eye” was in the sort of mood that seemed to have overtaken him now. “Who was it?”

“She won’t tell me.” Braden observed that the hour must have been approaching teatime, since the pedestrian traffic on Bond Street all seemed to be heading in the direction of the nearest eateries.

“Won’t tell you?” Weasel stared incredulously. “Why the hell not?”

“Doesn’t want me to shoot the fellow, for one thing,” Braden said. “Claims she doesn’t want his death on her conscience.”

“Then what the devil did she come here for?”

“She said she’d be willing to testify,” Braden said, “if I call off my wedding and Jackie brings about a suit, that she saw her with someone. Someone she didn’t recognize, but who certainly wasn’t me.”

Weasel removed the cigar from his mouth and whistled, low and long. “Jackie must’ve really done something to that one, to get her so riled.”

“Not at all,” Braden said, mildly. “The lady has nothing—that I can tell—against Jacquelyn. She was only willing to testify in exchange for compensation.”

He could almost hear Weasel’s jaw drop. “How much does she want?”

“Oh, it isn’t money she wants, Weasel.”

The older man shook his head. “What then?”

“She wants me,” Braden said, still not quite able to believe it, “to teach her how to make love.”

Weasel began to cough uncontrollably. He plucked the cigar from his mouth and choked until Braden presented him with a hastily poured whiskey and water.

“Thanks,” he said, taking the glass and downing its contents in a single swift gulp. That seemed to help somewhat. In a few moments, he was able to ask, “Are you serious, Dead? That little girl what was here? The one with the gloves?
She
wants you to . . .”

“Apparently.” Braden thought a whiskey of his own might not hurt. Accordingly, he downed a glass, but found it did not help very much. His mind was still in a whirl. It had been mightily difficult to think straight ever since the moment Caroline Linford had made her extraordinary demand.

What was he saying? He hadn’t been able to think straight since the moment she’d stepped into the room. Still, there was no denying that that handful of words—
What I need is for you to teach me how to make love—
had thrown him into a maelstrom of confusion.

Not that he hadn’t had similar requests before. Caroline Linford was simply the first who’d ever used the words
teach me how.
Of course, there was also the uncomfortable fact that she’d made it clear—not from the outset, but as soon as she’d realized what conclusion he’d jumped to—that she did not actually want to make love with him. No, apparently she only wanted him to
tell
her how it was done. That was a first—at least, in
his
experience with women.

It wasn’t that
all
women were attracted to him—only men with looks like the Marquis of Winchilsea were that fortunate. But though he wasn’t as traditionally handsome as some of his peers, there was something about Braden Granville that drew many women to him—which was fortunate, because he had always genuinely liked women. Until Jacquelyn, that is.

“It can’t be,” Weasel said, suddenly, interrupting Braden’s musings. “She ain’t the type.”

Braden blinked at him. “I beg your pardon.”

“That Lady Caroline ain’t the type,” Weasel said, again. “I mean, I may not know much, but I know types when I see’em, and that one . . . she’s what we used to call, back in the Dials, a one-man woman. Remember?”

Braden said, “I vaguely recall that there used to be women who fell into that category, when we were growing up. But I’d come to the conclusion that fidelity had rather lost its allure of late.”

“Not with girls like her,” Weasel asserted. “She’s a corker.”

A corker. Braden smiled. Lady Caroline Linford was a corker, at that. He recalled her last remark to him, the one about going to the Prince of Wales. She’d intended the comment to be biting, evidently unaware that no one could possibly take offense at anything uttered by such a sweetly upturned mouth. She would, he thought to himself, always have difficulty disciplining servants, since no one would ever be the least bit intimidated by her.

Quite unlike his fiancée, who could—and occasionally did—frighten her maid with a single glance.

“And Jackie?” Braden asked his secretary, just to hear someone else say it. “What’s she, Badge?”

“You know good and well what Jackie is,” Weasel said, with a grunt.

Well, that was the truth. He’d known perfectly well what he was getting himself into where Jacquelyn was concerned—or thought he had. When he’d turned thirty, not too many months ago, it had seemed only logical that he begin to think about marrying and siring an heir. The problem, of course, began as soon as he looked about for a suitable bride. Since Braden Granville was first and foremost a businessman, it was imperative that he find a bride who would not only make the perfect wife and mother, but also the ideal hostess, someone who could share gentle gossip and sympathize with the wives of the wealthy men he frequently entertained. That someone would necessarily have to be in the same social class as these women, or they would look down upon her and speak cattily behind her back, as women, Braden Granville knew, were wont to do.

So that categorically ruled out any candidates from his old neighborhood. Nor could he, he soon found, abide the marriageable misses he met at the various functions he attended: their prattle caused his head to ache, and the simpering attentions of their mammas, clearly aimed at getting their hands on his purse and not his person, were loathsome to him.

But in Lady Jacquelyn Seldon—beautiful, confident, silver-tongued Jacquelyn—he thought at last he’d found a soul mate. She came from a family with an age-old title and significant social connections, but no money, whereas he had all the money in the world, but no title, and hardly any connections. They were, he thought, the perfect match, made all the more appealing by the fact that Jacquelyn was untroubled by the stifling morality that made other girls her age so unappealing to him. She had always, from the first moment he’d met her, been perfectly willing to toss up her skirts and throw a leg around him, a habit quite appealing in a person with whom one planned to spend the rest of one’s life.

Too late, of course, he’d come to realize that this habit was one that Jacquelyn did not necessarily reserve solely for his appreciation.

Too late as well he’d realized the reason why Jacquelyn felt she could get away with this sort of behavior. He’d learned it one night, when he’d arrived unexpectedly at Jackie’s home, and entered her bedroom unannounced, only to overhear her saying conversationally to her mother, “If Granville is such a great genius, why did I see him use his fish fork to butter a roll at dinner the other night?’

And a man who’d commit a crime as heinous as the one she described was not at all likely to suspect a refined lady like herself of anything as base as philandering.

How wrong she’d been. And how much he longed to prove it to her.

Still, his engagement to a daughter of the Duke of Childes had already brought him unquestionable benefits, not the least of which was an endorsement from the Prince of Wales. Not that Braden didn’t think he’d have won that on his own merits, but his connection with Jacquelyn, whose father had been a longtime adviser to the prince, hadn’t hurt.

And of course, there was the fact that his own father was over the moon with joy at the prospect of blue-blooded grandchildren. Doubtlessly any grandchildren would have delighted Sylvester, but given his current obsession with lineage, the fact that his son might produce an heir with a descendant of a duke thrilled Sylvester more than any flying machine or invisibility potion ever could.

But the benefits, Braden was beginning to find, did not outstrip the drawbacks of being married to a woman like Lady Jacquelyn.

“So,” Weasel said, folding his hands beneath his head. “When’s the first lesson?”

Braden eyed the soles of the shoes his secretary had swung up to rest on the low table in front of the couch where he lounged. “There aren’t going to be any lessons,” he said, tersely. “And put your feet down. That wood’s over—”

But Weasel had already straightened up in his seat, dropping his feet to the floor.

“Not going to be any . . . Dead, you turned her down?”

“Of course I turned her down.” He turned back toward the window. “What do you take me for?”

“A bloody fool,” was Weasel’s prompt reply.

“No,” Braden said, still staring at the traffic going by in front of his offices. “Not a fool.” A fool would have accepted her offer. Accepted her offer and found himself sinking deeper and deeper into those translucent eyes. Eyes like that weren’t easy to climb out of once a fellow had sunk into them.

“Yes, a fool!” Weasel sprang up and began to pace in front of the leather sofa. “What are you thinking? Lady Caroline Linford, with her little white gloves and parasol, would make the perfect eyewitness in your case against Jackie!”

“I’m aware of that,” Braden said, woodenly.

“So what’d you turn her away for?” Weasel was practically shouting.

“I should think that would be obvious,” Braden said, slipping his hands into his trouser pockets and standing with his shoulders hunched. “You saw her.”

“Damned right I saw her,” Weasel said. “I told you. She’s a corker!”

“She’s also,” Braden pointed out, “the sort of girl who goes about with a chaperon. She’s marrying that idiot Hurst Slater because he apparently saved her brother’s life, or some such. She’s impossibly young. And I don’t mean in years, either.”

Comprehension dawned. Weasel gaped. “She’s a
virgin?”

“Well, of course she’s a virgin.” Braden threw him an annoyed glance. “What did you think?”

“I’ll tell you what I think,” came Weasel’s prompt reply. “I think you’re scared.”

Braden raised that single scarred eyebrow. Usually this gesture had the effect of silencing whomever he happened to be conversing with. Unfortunately, it had never worked on Weasel.

“Don’t pull that eyebrow trick with me,” Weasel said, disparagingly. “Admit it. You’re scared. Because you never had one before. A virgin, I mean.”

Braden rolled his eyes. “For God’s sake, Weasel,” he said. “She didn’t want me actually to physically
show
her how to . . . you know. She claimed she only wanted me to
tell
her—” He was interrupted by Weasel’s explosive bark of laughter. Braden frowned. “It isn’t,” he said, “funny.”