Educating Caroline (16 page)

So why did she feel so terrible about it?

And yet, when the opera had finished up, and they’d been descending the grand staircase to the lobby, Braden Granville—whose party had happened to be taking the stairs at the same time as hers—nodded to her politely, and said, “Good evening. I hope you enjoyed the performance.”

Caroline, who had been expecting him to ignore her as stonily as she’d planned on ignoring him, stammered, “Oh, um, well, it was all right, I suppose.”

“All right?” An older gentleman behind Braden Granville stared at Caroline as if she’d said something sacrilegious. “It was the most moving performance of
Faust
I’ve ever seen!”

Braden looked at the older man and said, calmly, “That’s the
only
performance of
Faust
you’ve ever seen, Pa.”

“Um,” Caroline said. “Maybe if it had been in English . . .”

“Caroline.” Lady Bartlett’s voice was unnaturally high. “Come along, dear. Peters has brought the carriage round.”

“Braden, my boy.” The elder Granville was grinning in a way that Caroline thought slightly . . . well, off. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends?”

And then Braden Granville was saying, in the most patient tone imaginable, “Father, may I present to you Lady Caroline Linford and her fiancé, the Marquis of Winchilsea. Thomas Linford, Earl of Bartlett, and his mother, Lady Bartlett. Oh, and this is Lady Emily Stanhope, daughter of Lord Woodson. . . . My father, Sylvester Granville.”

“Lady Bartlett,” the elder Granville murmured, reaching for the lady’s hand, and bowing low over it. “Sylvester Granville, at your service.”

“Mr. Granville.” Caroline’s mother, for once in her life, did not seem to know where to direct her gaze. She, too, Caroline realized, recognized that all was not well with Braden Granville’s father. “How . . . charming to meet you.”

Sylvester Granville straightened and released Lady Bartlett’s hand, a slightly silly expression suffusing his face. Why, Caroline thought, her heart swelling with pity, the great Granville’s father is mad! Perhaps not violently so, but clearly to some extent. The poor, poor man.

And poor Braden Granville, to whom she had just been so unforgivably rude!

Lady Jacquelyn’s mother, the dowager duchess, did not seem particularly troubled by the mental state of her daughter’s future father-in-law. Instead, all of her attention was focused on Lady Bartlett, a woman of about her own age, but whose fine skin and eyes put hers to shame—and the duchess knew it.

“How sweet,” she drawled, not taking her gaze off the milk-white skin Lady Bartlett’s red satin gown showed off to such an advantage. “A family outing to the opera, just like ours.”

Lady Bartlett’s fine eyes came into sharp focus then, the lids around them narrowing dangerously. “Ah,” she said. “How nice to see you again, Your Grace.”

The dowager duchess’s eyelids did some fluttering of their own. “Pardon me, but have we met?”

“Oh, Mother,” Lady Jacquelyn said, in a bored voice. “You remember Lady Bartlett, surely? Her daughter Lady Caroline and I were in school together—”

Caroline, who was becoming alarmed by the bizarreness of the situation, seized Lady Bartlett by the arm and said, “Come along, Mother. The carriage is waiting.”

“Oh.” Lady Bartlett seemed startled by Caroline’s sudden eagerness to be away. “Well, good-bye, then, Your Grace, Lady Jacquelyn, Mr. Granville, and, er, Mr. Granville.”

But unfortunately, that was not the last Caroline was to see of Braden Granville’s party. Because as they approached their own vehicle, a carriage bearing the crest of the Duke of Childes pulled up behind, and caused Caroline to freeze where she was.

The marquis saw the duke’s brougham at the same moment Caroline did, and he reached out and placed a restraining hand upon her arm. But it was far too late. Shaking herself free of her fiancé’s grip, Caroline forgot all about the evening’s awkwardness and turned toward the dowager duchess with a stricken expression, crying, “Bearing reins? Your Grace, what can you be thinking?”

The duchess raised her carefully groomed eyebrows. “Bearing what?”

“Bearing reins.” Caroline pointed accusingly at the team of fine grays that were harnessed to the duchess’s carriage. Standing with their heads erect, their necks curled, the horses looked as alert as if they were marching on parade.

But the effect was deceiving. The animals were not holding their heads high due to any sort of equine pride. Their heads were being pulled back by a second pair of reins, attached to a double bit that forbade the horses from relaxing their necks, tossing their heads, and even, Caroline knew, from breathing or swallowing properly.

“Look,”
Caroline said. She gestured toward the mouth of the nearest horse, which was foam flecked. “Do you see that? Do you see how it’s pink, the foam? That’s blood, Your Grace.”

The duchess, who’d leaned forward to see what Caroline was indicating, recoiled. “Is the animal ill?” she asked, her repugnance evident in not only her lovely face, but her voice as well.

“No, they aren’t ill.” Lady Bartlett spoke quickly. “You must forgive Caroline, Your Grace. She has a soft spot for horses, and she can’t bear to see them in even the slightest discomfort—”

“There’s nothing
slight
about the discomfort of a bearing rein, Mother,” Caroline snapped. “I should like to know how you would feel if
you
had one in your mouth, your head pulled back so far you can hardly breathe—”

Lady Bartlett, embarrassed by the scene her daughter was causing, tittered nervously, and before her son could stop her—and Thomas, always supportive of his sister, tried—was saying apologetically to the duchess, “She takes after her father, I’m afraid. Quite mad for horses, he was. Why, he must have fired half a dozen drivers because he thought they were too rough on his little darlings, as he called them. He’d stop men on the street and lecture them if he thought they were being cruel to their mounts. Caroline’s no better. You know she’s actually acquired quite a little collection of nags she’s saved from the knacker’s yard. . . .”

Lady Bartlett’s voice trailed off as the dowager duchess and her daughter exchanged glances.

“How interesting,” Lady Jacquelyn said, coldly. “But I’m of the opinion that it isn’t anyone’s business how my mother keeps her horses.”

Caroline, deeply regretting that she hadn’t shot Lady Jacquelyn when she’d first had the inclination, declared, loudly, “It’s the business of any human being with an ounce of compassion, Lady Jacquelyn. It’s unconscionable, really unconscionable, for your mother to allow these animals to suffer in this manner.”

“But,” the duchess said, confusedly, “Lady Bartlett said they aren’t ill—”

A deep voice interrupted her.

“The bearing reins are cutting their mouths.” Braden Granville had stepped forward and laid a hand upon the unnaturally arched neck of the nearest horse. He spoke not to the duchess, but to the brougham’s driver, perched behind the horses, whip in hand. “Have they stood like this all night?”

The driver nodded, looking apologetic. “Her Grace don’t like a horse with a droopin’ head, my lord.”

“Yes,” the duchess said, emphatically. “Yes, I like a smart-looking horse—”

“Well, they won’t be smart-looking for long.” Braden Granville spoke with grim authority. “They’ll be of no use to you in a year or two. You’re damaging their windpipes. It’s a shame, too, because these are fine animals.”

“I should certainly hope they’re fine animals,” the dowager duchess said, imperiously. “I paid enough for them.” Then, with an impatient gesture at her driver, she said, “Well, don’t just sit there, man. Remove the things. Remove the things at once!”

The driver climbed down from his seat with alacrity, and, with the help of one of the duchess’s footmen, began to remove the second set of reins from the horses’ heads.

“I say, Caro,” Thomas leaned down to whisper in his sister’s ear. “Well done!”

But Caroline knew it wasn’t because of anything she’d said that the dowager duchess had capitulated so suddenly. It had been Braden Granville’s influence, far more than hers, that had liberated the horses. Accordingly, she flashed him a grateful smile—

But he had already turned away, and was busy handing his fiancée, now wearing a pretty scowl upon her heart-shaped face, into the carriage.

Which was, she told herself, just as well. She didn’t want, after all, to give him false expectations. Because, ill father or not, nothing had changed. She was most certainly not going to his offices tomorrow at four o’clock. Most decidedly
not.

12

B
raden Granville pulled his pocket watch from his waistcoat for a third time. He shook the twenty-four carat gold and diamond instrument, then held it to his ear. Then he examined it again, glancing at the ormolu clock on the mantel across from his desk.

It was five minutes past four o’clock in the afternoon. There was no question in the matter. His watch kept perfect time, and Weasel made sure the mantel clock was wound every evening before they left the office.

There was no doubt about it: She wasn’t coming.

Not that he’d expected her to. Not really. It had been, he knew, reprehensible of him even to mention it to her last night. He had not intended to speak to her. Had told himself, firmly, not even to entertain the idea of speaking to her, once he’d noticed her in the box opposite his.

He hadn’t even come close to taking his own good advice.

In his own defense, however, his interest in Caroline Linford was only partly due to the fact that ever since she’d stormed from his office a few days earlier, he’d found it perfectly impossible to put her out of his mind. She was certainly one of the most original women he’d met in some time.

But that, he knew, wasn’t quite it. It was something else.

What he couldn’t decide was exactly what that something was.

But then there was what had happened the evening after her extraordinary visit to his offices . . . the evening Weasel had come home with a badly bleeding leg wound, having been stabbed by a man who, like himself, had been following Jacquelyn Seldon’s mystery lover.

Braden found it astounding that the man could have had
two
people following him, but Weasel was adamant.

“He asked me,” Weasel had said, through tightly gritted-teeth, as the surgeon had probed at the ragged hole in his thigh, “who sent me. Who I was with.”

Braden, wracked with guilt despite the doctor’s assertion that it was only a flesh wound, and that his secretary would be on his feet again soon, had urged his friend to save his strength, but Weasel had insisted on telling him everything.

“I told him it wasn’t none of his bloody business who sent me,” Weasel went on, between swigs from the flask of whiskey Braden had given him. “And then I asked who’d sent
him.
And that’s when he up and stabbed me. He’d have killed me, too, if I’d given’im half a chance. But I didn’t. I ran—probably left a trail of blood all along the road after me, but I ran faster than I’ve ever run in my life. I lost him eventually. I don’t think he knew the area at all.”

“I don’t understand.” Braden sat slumped in a chair beside Weasel’s bed. He would not soon forgive himself for sending others to do his dirty work. Granted, his face was recognizable enough—thanks to the frequency with which sketches of him appeared in the
Times
—that he attracted far more attention on the street than he liked. That, coupled with his height and large build, made him a pathetic tail—he would have been found out at once.

But that his friend should have suffered for him . . . that he would not allow, not ever again.

“Who was he watching, this other fellow?” Braden asked, swallowing down his self-loathing for the moment. “Was he spying on Jacquelyn? Or her lover?”

“The lover.” Weasel looked at the surgeon, who was threading a needle with businesslike precision. “’Scuse me, but is that going to leave a scar?”

“Almost certainly,” the surgeon replied.

“Good,” Weasel said. Like many men who’d grown up in the Dials, Weasel equated scarring to manliness, and did not mind in the least acquiring new ones. To Braden, he said, as if there’d been no interruption, “He came on foot, from out of nowhere, I swear it, Dead. The bloke who came callin’ on Jackie, I mean. Slunk down to the servants’ entrance this time, almost before I even noticed he was there. She opened the door for’im—I saw her face in the light that fell from inside the house. He had on another one of those blasted hoods, so I couldn’t see anything but his nose—”

“Of course,” Braden commented, drily.

“Of course. A second or two later, this other git shows up, panting like he’d been followin’ the first bloke— Jackie’s bloke—for a while. But moving real quietlike. He was a professional, Dead, I’m sure of it.”

“And you’re sure you’d never seen him before?” Braden had asked his old friend.

“He wasn’t from the Dials,” Weasel had assured him. “I didn’t recognize him from the docks, or the track, or any of the tables I’ve been to lately. He didn’t talk like . . . well, any Eastender I ever met. I don’t think he was even from London, Dead. But he was good. He was damned good.”

He’d have had to be, to have caught Weasel so off guard. Ronald Ambrose had not earned his moniker merely for his persistence. He was also ferocious in a fight—when he was not taken by complete surprise, that is.

It was the unwarranted viciousness of the attack that worried Braden most. Most men who struck out with violence did so because they were afraid. But Weasel hadn’t done anything at all to threaten this man he’d encountered. And yet he’d assaulted him with a brutality that shocked even Braden Granville, used as he was to violence.

Which was why he was calling his men off. He was not willing to risk any of his friends’ lives, simply so that he could have the name of his fiancée’s lover. There was another way to achieve something like the same end.

Not one he particularly liked. He wasn’t looking forward to employing it. But now he had no other choice. He could not let Jacquelyn win. He could not let her come away from their relationship with any of the money he’d worked so hard to earn . . . especially when it was so clear that she held the fact that he’d had to work for it in so much contempt.

Which was where Caroline Linford came in. Lady Caroline Linford, with her shocking proposal, was the only chance Braden had now of winning his case against Jackie. Though it galled him, the idea of going along with such an ill-conceived, completely ludicrous scheme as hers, what other choice did he have?

It might not have been so bad, if it had been some other woman. But no, it had had to be Lady Caroline Linford, who, with her white gloves and her chaperon, was exactly the sort of society miss Braden had made such an effort to avoid when he’d been shopping for a bride. Having encountered so few of them in his life, virgins quite thoroughly terrified him—when they weren’t boring him senseless.

Well, Caroline Linford had never once bored him since she’d burst so boldly into his life, but her naÔveté
was
a bit terrifying. She was demanding to be taught how to make love, when it seemed extremely likely to him that she had never even been properly kissed. How in God’s name was he going to explain to such an inexperienced girl the fine art of seduction?

But there was nothing else for it. The game had got too dangerous. He had to end it any way he could, and the sooner, the better.

But was Lady Caroline still willing to help him? She certainly hadn’t appeared so the night before. Her ire had been raised by his initial rejection, and he could only pray that the finger he’d run along her neck had done what he’d intended—piqued her interest again. A man who could generate such sensation with the merest touch of his finger, he hoped she was thinking, must be in possession of a wealth of other such sexual secrets.

Little did the poor girl know that he’d been counting on her being as ticklish as she looked.

But what did that matter? What was important was that she came.

Only it didn’t look as if she were going to.

He glanced at the clock. Twelve after. She most definitely wasn’t coming.

Which was a shame. He’d been looking forward, in an odd way, to seeing her again—and not just in order to test his theory that Caroline Linford was one of those women whose looks seemed to improve upon acquaintance. He’d already come to that conclusion, especially since observing her at the opera the night before. Though once again simply dressed in a white gown, with very little on in the way of jewelry, she had caught his eye and held it so long, he’d had to force himself to keep from staring. Even when proselytizing on the perils of bearing reins, a habit that might prove obnoxious in a less attractive woman, Caroline Linford was well worth a second look.

She was, if nothing else, an original. There weren’t many women of his acquaintance who’d rebuke a duchess for cruelty to animals. There were even fewer who’d have the temerity to admit to having been bored by
Faust.

And none, that he knew of, would approach a virtual stranger, requesting lessons in lovemaking.

That, he’d decided, was her appeal, and why, truth be told, he’d been relieved that Weasel’s stabbing had given him the excuse to contact her again. That she was like no woman he’d ever met before. That, he told himself, was why, ever since that afternoon in his office, he’d been unable to put the memory of her completely from his mind, why often, completely unbidden, her image appeared in his mind’s eye. It had nothing to do, he assured himself, with that sweet mouth or haunting eyes of hers. Nothing to do with them at all.

And then, just as he’d abandoned all hope, and was preparing to go home and spend the evening entertaining the infirm Weasel, most likely by losing to him at cards, there was a tap on his office door, and Snake, who’d volunteered to take over Weasel’s duties, poked his head round it and said, “There’s a Lady Caroline Linford to see you, sir.”

And there she was, eyeing him warily as she approached his desk, a closed parasol swinging from one wrist, and a beaded reticule from the other.

“Mr. Granville,” she said, without a smile, after Snake had closed the door behind her. She stood before his desk radiating indignation, much like a recalcitrant schoolgirl brought before the headmistress for disobedience.

He hadn’t even had a chance to stand. He had been rendered completely immobile, dumbstruck first by her sudden appearance, then by the fact that—yet again—she looked nothing like she had that first time he’d noticed her, when she’d been sitting on the stairs at Dame Ashforth’s. Then she’d been a plain-faced, mousy-haired thing, with an unremarkable figure and a doleful expression.

Now there wasn’t anything at all plain about her face. She was, and clearly always had been, doe eyed and dewy lipped. Her hair glowed with flashes of gold and amber, and her figure was all that was light and pleasing.

The Marquis of Winchilsea, he thought, not for the first time, was a fool, if her claim that he was not in love with her was actually true.

He said—stupidly, he later thought—the first thing that came into his head: “Where is Violet?”

“Oh, Violet.” She reached up and began undoing her bonnet strings. “She’s outside. The spell you put her under still hasn’t worn off. She trusts you implicitly now.”

“But you—” He watched as she placed first the parasol-and then her bonnet on a small table beside one of the leather chairs in front of his desk. “—don’t share her feelings about me, I take it?”

“Trust you, you mean? Why should I?” Caroline dropped into the chair, and began stripping off her gloves. “You obviously don’t know your own mind.”

“What about you?” he couldn’t help asking. “You told me last night not to expect you today.”

She busied herself with digging through her reticule, her honey-colored curls hiding her face, her hair being slightly mussed. None of Jacquelyn’s elaborate coiffures, he thought, had ever been so fetching.

“Yes,” she said. “Well, I don’t think either of us was perfectly honest last night.” From her reticule, Caroline produced a small leather-bound book, a pencil, and something wrapped in a handkerchief. “I said I wasn’t coming, and you said nothing had happened to make you particularly anxious to rid yourself of Lady Jacquelyn.” Caroline didn’t look at him. She was busy unfolding the handkerchief. “We both know that neither of those statements was true.”

The object successfully unwrapped, Caroline removed it, and settled it over her nose. It was, to Braden’s astonishment, a pair of spectacles.

“Now,” Caroline said, opening the book—a diary, he realized, from its blank pages—and holding her pencil poised over the first page. “Shall we begin?”

He could not take his eyes off the spectacles. They were rimmed in gold wire, quite small and feminine, but most definitely . . . well,
spectacles.
Behind them, her already sizable brown eyes looked enormous. He said— stupidly, he realized, but he couldn’t help himself— “What are you doing?”

She looked down at the diary, and then up again. “Well,” she said, blinking those luminous eyes. “Taking notes, of course.”

“Taking
notes?”
he burst out.

“Well, yes, of course.” She reached up to lower the spectacles a little, and examined him over the rims. “I shouldn’t want to forget anything. And this way, you won’t have to repeat yourself.”

He stared at her. The spectacles, while giving her the appearance of a very young—though not very strict— governess, did not actually alter her looks to the extent that he’d have thought such a hideous accessory might. In fact, they leant her a surprising air of piquancy.

“I haven’t at all long,” Caroline said, apologetically. “Only an hour or so before anyone notices I’m gone. So if you don’t mind, Mr. Granville, I should like to begin by asking you what made you change your mind.”

“Yes,” he said. “Well, that’s fair, I suppose. And it’s something you should know, anyway, seeing as how you say you are acquainted with the gentleman in question. Perhaps you could deliver a warning from me to him.”

She raised her eyebrows inquiringly. “I beg your pardon?”