Educating Caroline (14 page)

“Oh,” Weasel cried, clutching his stomach. “But it is, mate! It is! You may be able to hit a rat at fifty paces, but you ain’t got the slightest idea what makes a female tick, have you?”

Chagrined, but not completely insensible to the humor in the situation, Braden waited until his secretary had calmed down before asking, “Well, if that’s true, why am I known as the Lothario of London, while you’re just called Weasel?”

Weasel wiped tears of laughter from the corners of his eyes. “Your success with the fairer sex has always been overrated, in my opinion.”

“You think so?” Braden drawled. “Well, I haven’t noticed any virgins throwing themselves at you, begging you to educate them in the ways of love.”

Weasel snorted. “I haven’t time to run around after every pretty woman that passes my way. I’m too busy looking after
your
correspondence, and running your bloody business.”

“Is that what you do all day?” Braden inquired, mildly. “I always fancied you were generally at the gaming tables, gambling away
my
hard-earned money.”

“Don’t try to change the subject,” Weasel growled, clearly trying to steer his employer away from that particular topic. “You had a perfect shot at Jackie, Dead, and you flinched.”

“For now,” Braden said, calmly. “But that doesn’t mean I’ve put away my guns.”

“But
Lady Caroline Linford,
Dead,” Weasel persisted. “You couldn’t ask for a more credible witness.”

“Perhaps not,” Braden said. “But I won’t drag her into this. It’s a dirty business, and no place for a girl like Caroline Linford.” Trying to block the memory of those reproachful eyes, he squared his shoulders and said confidently, “We’ll catch Jackie out eventually, mark my words.”

Weasel looked annoyed. “I sincerely hope so. It’s my night to follow her. I have to tell you, Dead, I’m getting tired of lurkin’ around, hoping to catch a glimpse of that bloke of hers. Why can’t you just tell her the wedding’s off, chuck a pile of money at her, and be done with it? If you paid her enough, I doubt she’d go squealing to her lawyers.”

Braden was growing tired of explaining the reasoning behind his action—or inaction, as the case happened to be. “The principle of the thing, Weasel! The principle of the thing! Why should I pay her for making a cuckold out of me?”

“Christ, Dead, you’ve given her a bloody fortune already for her trousseau. What’s a few thousand more?”

Braden shook his head. “You don’t understand. The trousseau, the ring—all of that is contractual. She doesn’t get to keep it if the marriage doesn’t take place. And it isn’t going to.” His expression went steely. “You accused me of not knowing what makes a female tick. That may be true, but I can tell you a lot about what makes Jacquelyn Seldon tick. She thinks that because I grew up in the Dials—because I only recently came into my fortune— because I earned it, instead of the method preferred by her set, inheriting it—that I am a fool. She thinks that because I grew up poor, she can play me like that harp she sometimes drags out at parties and plucks. Well, I’m out to prove her wrong. And I will prove it, as soon as I have some better proof than a faceless stranger my men may or may not have seen leaving her house in the dead of night.”

“They
did
see him!” Weasel stabbed a finger at his employer. “I tell you, they saw him! Is it their bloody fault the bloke’s slippery as a cat? I swear, it’s as if he were a phantom, or something.” Then the secretary grinned. “Too bad we didn’t have him workin’ for us, huh, Dead? Back when we were in a different kind of business, if you get my meaning? We’d never have gotten caught, if we’d had Jackie’s boy on our side. Wonder if he’s workin’ for one of our competitors these days?”

Braden did not return the smile. “Our competitors,” he said, severely, “are the Americans. Remember? A company called Colt? We’re walking on the right side of the law these days, my friend.” He turned back toward the window. “And as for Jackie’s lover being a phantom,” he said, his voice nothing but a rumbling growl, “we know now that’s not true. Because Caroline Linford’s seen him.”

10

“
B
ut,” the Dowager Lady Bartlett said, “Peters says he waited for you for almost an hour.”

“Oh, Mother.” Caroline leaned against the balcony railing, scanning the crowd through her opera glasses. “It was nothing, all right? Only an errand. I say, Lady Rawlings is looking particularly rotund this evening. Can she be having
another
baby? How many is that now? My God, she seems to be trying to give the queen a run for the money.”

“I’ll thank you, miss,” Lady Bartlett said, acidly, “to save your comments about the queen and her baby-making habits until you’re fortunate enough to have produced a baby of your own. And stop spying on people through those things. They’re to see the performers, not the public.”

“That tears it.” Caroline lowered the mother-of-pearl and gold glasses, and turned to Emily Stanhope, who sat in the chair beside hers. “Lord Swenson dyes his hair. There isn’t a doubt in my mind anymore. No one has hair that black. No one.”

“Except maybe an Egyptian,” Emily agreed. “And Lord Swenson is most definitely
not
an Egyptian. His people all come from Surrey.”

“An errand?” Lady Bartlett, from the seat behind her daughter’s, would not let the matter rest. “What kind of errand takes an hour to complete? And at the offices of Braden Granville, no less? I simply don’t understand it.”

“Oh, really, Ma,” Caroline said, lifting the glasses again, and training them on the people taking their seats below. “Peters is exaggerating. It was more like twenty minutes.”

“But what were you doing at Braden Granville’s offices in the first place?”

Caroline lowered the opera glasses and rolled her eyes at Emily, who had turned away with a smirk. “I
told
you, Ma,” Caroline said, for what seemed the hundredth time. “I went to buy Tommy one of those new guns. You know, the one that’s been in all the papers. I wanted it to be a surprise. You know, for Tommy’s birthday.”

“A gun?” Lady Bartlett was appalled. “For Tommy? Caroline! You? I don’t believe it.”

Emily, beside Caroline, started to snicker. Caroline gave her a swift kick on the side of the ankle, and the snickering turned to a yelp of pain.

“You know he’s going back to school in the fall, Mother,” Caroline explained, “and I think he ought to have something that he can protect himself with. Oxford obviously isn’t as safe as it once was, and a Granville—”

“I don’t like it.” Lady Bartlett fanned herself energetically. She was dressed in one of her newest gowns, an elegantly cut creation in shiny red satin, with real roses pinned to the sleeves. Her son, upon seeing her in it, had had the impertinence to inquire whether she was certain she was only going to the opera, and not actually performing in it, a remark that had put the Lady Bartlett into the foul mood from which she still suffered.

“And I must say, I’m surprised at you, Caroline.” Lady Bartlett shook her head until her curls swayed. “You have always been most outspoken in your condemnation of violence. And now suddenly you’re saying it’s all right—”

“To defend oneself,” Caroline pointed out. “That’s all.”

Her mother, however, wasn’t listening. “And Braden Granville, of all people,” she went on. “You had to go to see Braden Granville about it. Well, he isn’t like us, you know, Caroline, however much Tommy might like to think otherwise.” Lady Bartlett always acquired a box every season, so that she could sit in it and say whatever she wanted to about anyone, without fear of it being overheard. “He was born poor, and you know what they say. . . .”

“You can take the man out of the slums, but you can’t take the slums out of the man.” Caroline and Emily mouthed the words along with Lady Bartlett, since they’d both heard her utter them so often. Then they looked at one another and burst out laughing.

“It really isn’t at all like you, Caroline,” Lady Bartlett went on, ignoring the girls, “to buy your brother a
gun.
A
gun!
Why, what if it goes off accidentally, and he ends up shooting himself?”

“That’s why I’m buying him a Granville,” Caroline said, when she’d managed to catch her breath again. “They’re supposed to be safer—”

“And I’m not convinced,” Lady Bartlett continued, relentlessly, “that Tommy ought to go back to school in the fall. I don’t think he should be attending an institution where the students aren’t safe to walk the streets at night. You know what Dr. Pettigrew said. Tommy isn’t to excite himself unduly. Any strain on his heart could potentially be hazardous to his—”

Emily Stanhope’s elbow connected solidly with Caroline’s arm.
“Look,”
she whispered, urgently, when Caroline, rubbing her arm, turned to see what was the matter. Caroline followed her friend’s gaze, and saw, in the box across the theater from theirs, a familiar face. She instantly lifted the opera glasses to her eyes, and peered through them.

It was Braden Granville, all right, looking absurdly imposing for someone who was only dressed in evening clothes, same as every other man in the place. Why was it that on him, however, the ubiquitous black coat appeared to make his shoulders look so very massive? He must, Caroline decided, have an excellent tailor.

Well, and why not? He had everything money could buy. Including, apparently, the ability to track down the identity of his fiancée’s secret lover without Caroline’s help, thank you very much.

“Look at him.” Emily, to whom Caroline had related the truth of what had really occurred while Peters had been waiting outside Granville Enterprises, leaned forward, obstructing her view through the binoculars. “Just who does he think he is?”

“I believe,” Caroline said, rising in her seat so she could see above Emily’s head, “that he thinks he’s Braden Granville.”

“Braden Granville,” Emily muttered. “King of everything.”

“Emily,” Caroline warned.

“Well, seriously, Caro. Imagine the gall of him, turning down an invitation to teach you to make love! You! Lady Caroline Linford! Why, you’re the prettiest girl I know. What could he have been thinking?”

Caroline tore the opera glasses from his face, and threw a hasty glance at her mother.
“Emily! Not here. We are not going to discuss this here.”

“Oh!” Emily cried, reaching for the glasses. “Look who’s joining him!”

Caroline looked. A woman whose creamy shoulders and magnificent bosom were well displayed by her dangerously low decolletage had joined Braden Granville in his box. In fact, when she bent to smooth her skirt beneath her before sitting down, Caroline was awarded a view of her breasts that was every bit as unimpeded as the one she’d had a few nights earlier, at Dame Ashforth’s.

Lowering the glasses with a scowl, she asked, beneath her breath, “Why is it that my mother treats it as a mortal crime if my decolletage slips so much as an inch, but Jackie Seldon can get away with going about bare breasted as an Amazon?”

“That’s easy enough,” Emily said. “Look at
her
mother.”

Sure enough, the dowager duchess, taking a seat behind Lady Jacquelyn, had on a gown almost as indecent as her daughter’s. As the older gentleman who was sitting beside her illustrated, by eagerly holding the dowager’s program while she adjusted her skirts, Lady Jacquelyn’s mother was as irresistible to the opposite sex as her daughter.

Caroline sighed gustily. “It isn’t fair. Why do girls like Jacquelyn Seldon get all the men? Don’t they know she’s incapable of fidelity? And from what I remember from school, she always treated her horses very shabbily indeed.”

“Men don’t care about things like that,” Emily replied, with a shrug. “All they care about is whether or not their knob is being polished on a regular basis.”

Caroline made a face at her friend’s crudeness. “Not
all
of them,” she pointed out. “Tommy doesn’t care about that.”

As had been happening regularly since the earl’s startling revelation a few days earlier, Emily grinned widely at the mention of his name. “That’s because he hasn’t tried it yet,” she said. “Wait until he does. He’ll be addicted to it, just like all the others.”

Caroline, whose relationship with her brother was not always an easy one, nevertheless said, with sisterly loyalty, “Not Tommy.”

As she spoke, she’d continued to gaze through the opera glasses into Braden Granville’s box. Only now, she realized with a start, someone was staring right back at her through a pair of opera glasses of his own.

Not just any someone, either, but Braden Granville himself.

Caroline lowered her glasses with a start, feeling her cheeks heat up. What, she wondered, had
he
been looking at? Not
her,
surely. Though it had certainly
looked
as if it had been her Braden Granville had trained his glasses upon. But that was impossible. He hated her! Her scandalous offer had repulsed and offended him. She was quite sure it had. Why else had he turned it down?

Maybe he’d been looking at Emmy. Yes, that had to have been it. Everyone looked at Emmy, who had always steadfastly refused to wear a corset. Her loose-fitting gowns were actually very pretty—much prettier than the horrid poofy trousers she’d worn briefly, inspired by the design of the American Mrs. Bloomer, until her father had finally put his foot down, and threatened to cut off her allowance if she appeared in them in public again. But no matter how pretty Emmy might look in her waistless gowns, she did not look conventional, and that was always reason for someone to stare.

Yes, Caroline comforted herself. That had been what had so caught Mr. Granville’s interest on this side of the theater. Emmy and her corsetless frock. Certainly not Caroline. Never Caroline.

And yet when, a few seconds later, she slid her gaze toward his box, she found that he was still—yes,
still
— staring at her! Her, not Emmy at all! Her!

“And that’s another thing.” Lady Bartlett leaned forward and seized the back of her daughter’s chair. “Braden Granville has an execrable reputation where women are concerned. Why, Lady Chittenhouse told me she saw him at Ascot two seasons ago in the company of a
married
viscountess. And they were
not
behaving as one might think a married viscountess and an eligible bachelor ought. I want you to promise me, Caroline, that you will not go to Braden Granville’s again.”

Caroline, her cheeks still burning, said nothing, though it occurred to her that if she were never again in Braden Granville’s presence, that would be quite all right with her.

A new, unmistakably masculine voice filled the box. “Not Braden Granville once again,” the Marquis of Winchilsea said, as he and Caroline’s brother, smelling of cigar smoke, took their seats. “Has Caroline been talking corsets with him tonight?”

“Talking corsets?” Lady Bartlett fanned herself rapidly. “Caroline, what is the marquis referring to? Tell me at once. I must know.”

“Oh, Mother.” Caroline gave her fiancé a sour look— careful not to turn her head in the direction of Braden Granville’s box. “It’s nothing. Just a passing remark Mr. Granville made last week at Dame Ashforth’s.”

“I didn’t know you were acquainted with Granville, Caro.” Thomas took his seat behind Emily, and immediately began to tear off bits of his program and roll them into small balls, in preparation for the opera’s more dramatic moments, during which he would hurl them into Emily’s lap, as was his custom. “I mean, not more than to say how-do to.”

“I’m not acquainted with Mr. Granville more than to say how-do to,” Caroline insisted, wishing it were true. “Really, Hurst, I wish you wouldn’t give my mother ideas. You know how excitable she is.”

“Excitable?” Lady Bartlett was fanning herself more energetically than ever now. “Don’t be ridiculous. I swear I don’t know where you get your ideas sometimes, Caroline. I am not excitable. I can’t help wondering, however, why it is so very wrong of me to be
concerned
—and that’s all I am, concerned—when I hear that my only daughter is engaging in conversation about underthings with strange men. It is, after all, my maternal duty to protect her. Don’t you think so, my lord?”

“Indeed, madam,” Hurst said, lifting Lady Bartlett’s hand, and kissing the back of it lightly. “And might I compliment you on the exemplary job of it you’ve done thus far?”

Lady Bartlett giggled coquettishly. “Why, thank you, Lord Winchilsea.”

Disgusted, Caroline slumped down in her chair—as much as her corset would allow her to, anyway—and concentrated on hating Braden Granville.

That’s right, she hated him. Now more than ever, seeing as how he seemed intent on publicly humiliating her with that pointed stare—yes, he was still looking her way, though thankfully he’d lowered the opera glasses.

Oh, yes, she quite positively hated him now. Not that she’d any liking for him before. Why, the man was nothing but a hypocrite! Imagine, him seeming so shocked by her proposal, when everyone knew what a wicked reputation he had.

And yet he hadn’t seemed at all wicked to Caroline. He had seemed like a fairly normal, rather thoughtful man—a little on the forceful side, maybe, but she supposed that was only natural, since he was, after all, in charge of such a large and prosperous business. In fact, if she hadn’t heard as many rumors as she had about his conquests, she would never have guessed he was a ruthless predator of her sex—which was what men like him were called in the novels she liked.