Kasey Michaels (10 page)

“Probably,” Sophie said with a lilting giggle that cost her more than he would ever know. Then she escaped to the hallway, stopping just outside the doorway to compose herself. She walked toward the stairs, her head held high, her smile bright. Determinedly bright, so that no shadows could be seen.

You may all go to pot.

– Oliver Goldsmith

Chapter Four

T
he comfort of one’s oldest and dearest friends during times of trial is one of life’s blessings, or so the ninth duke had always believed. Which did nothing to explain his current hope that Sir Wallace Merritt and Baron Marshall Lorimar would disappear into the hole His Grace was wishing would appear at their feet.

However, as the duke of Selbourne did have more than a modicum of fondness for his two friends, the fact that no hole appeared in the study floor could only be termed a good thing. Even if it made for a damned uncomfortable morning, although not as uncomfortable as the interlude he had spent in this same room the previous evening. He had been most especially unnerved when Sophie had asked why mankind was here, if not to be happy. When he’d nearly answered, “We are here to be
earnest
,” he’d realized that perhaps, just perhaps, Sophie Winstead wasn’t all fluff and nonsense. And that he, Bramwell Seaton, might just be turning into a bit of a “stick.”

Which was why he’d kissed her. That had to be why he’d kissed her. To prove to himself that blood still flowed through his veins. Hot blood. Hotter, and much more uncomfortable than he’d expected.

But not, it appeared, as hot as Sophie Winstead’s quick, unexpected temper. He bit back a smile as he remembered the brandy snifter suddenly taking flight, smashing against the wall. He looked at the stain now, still fairly damp where one of the housemaids had done her best to sponge it from the Chinese wallpaper.

Had her mother taught her that? To appear the perfect woman, biddable, eager to please—then with this other, darker, most surprising, intriguing side? Not that it mattered. Because he wasn’t interested. Even if her lips had tasted of honey and promise. Even if her body, those perfect breasts, had all but branded him, marked him as both vulnerable and pathetic, a man who could be turned from his most rational thoughts and decisions and thrown into turmoil without the first notion of how he had come to be so unbalanced.

God, but he wished he’d never heard of Sophie Winstead. He didn’t need this complication in his life. His well-ordered, well-thought-out life with his suddenly not quite so clear plans for the future.

“So? Out with it, man?” Sir Wallace commanded, holding tightly to the arms of the straight-back, leather-bottomed chair, the better to keep his relaxed, brandy-greased body from gracefully sliding to the floor in a heap. “Is she or ain’t she?”

“Bram’s not going to answer you, Wally,” the baron pointed out, watching the trio of smoke rings he’d just puffed through his pursed lips as they ascended toward the ceiling. “He’s a gentleman. Ain’t you, Bram?”

“A gentleman? I suppose so. But he wasn’t always,” Sir Wallace responded before Bramwell could answer, then slapped his knee. “No, he was not! Why, I remember the time we were on leave in Dover. You remember that, Bram?” He turned to the Baron. “There we were, Lorrie, stuck in port until the tide turned, and bored to flinders. And drinking a bit. I won’t lie and say we weren’t. So Bram here takes it into his head to steal us a pig. Oh, not a big one. Just a little one, he says. Our own private, seagoing pig. We’ll hide the thing away until we’re sick of the garbage they feed us aboard ship and are ready for a feast. Think of it, Lorrie—heading out to sea for God only knew how long, to face all sorts of dangers, to maybe get blown to Hell and beyond—and Bram here is worrying about our bellies. Well, it seems a fine enough plan to me anyway—o’course I’m drunk as a wheelbarrow at the time—until he tells me he wants to take the pig aboard
alive
!”

Bramwell bent his head and bit on the inside of his cheek, wishing his friend silent.

“He tells me the pig we find is too little to make much of a meal. We’ll have to take him with us, Bram says, hide him well, and then fatten him up once he’s on board. So I say to him, ‘I say Bram, how’re we to do that?’ And he doesn’t even blink. He says, he says to me, we’ll call him Ensign Porker. And we do! Give him space in our own damn cabin! Feed that damn pig, fatten him up, clean up after it—and that’s no fun, let me tell you. And then Bram here decides he loves the thing, and won’t kill it. Two months of feeding and mopping up after that damnable pig, hiding it from everyone, and now he won’t eat it.” He turned to his friend accusingly. “You still have the thing somewhere, don’t you, Bram?”

Bramwell rubbed at his forehead, embarrassed, then reluctantly smiled. “Ensign Porker resides most happily at Selbourne Hall, yes. But you didn’t want to slaughter the animal either, Wally, in the end. I believe you even went so far as to say it was fratricide.”

“Yes, well,” Sir Wallace explained, puffing out his rosy cheeks, “I was also fairly deep in my cups at the time, celebrating the end of the war, as I remember, and feeling overly sentimental.”

“You’re always fairly deep in your cups, Wally,” the Baron broke in kindly enough, handing his friends what would be their first glasses of wine for the day—well, his and Bramwell’s that was. Sir Wallace was already at least a half bottle of wine and several snifters of cherry brandy ahead of them. “That’s why your nose is so red. By the bye, it looks like you forgot to powder it again this morning. I believe, if I sat close enough, I could read by the shine on the thing.”

“Don’t deny a man his only pleasure,” Sir Wallace said gruffly, then downed the contents of his glass in a single long swallow. “Ah, that’s better. Now, where were we?”

“We were asking Bram here to tell us about his new ward,” the Baron supplied helpfully, earning himself a quick, withering glance from the ninth duke.

“She’s not my ward, Lorrie, and well you know it,” Bramwell corrected, wondering how he was going to warn his friends that they were about to go out for a morning drive with a young woman bent on breaking their hearts. Bent on breaking the heart of every gentleman she met.

The baron smiled, exposing two rows of very even white teeth. “Yes, Bram, I well know it. But that doesn’t mean I don’t delight in watching you wince every time I prod at you with that particular pointy stick. Now, tell us the whole of it. I saw the Widow Winstead once, remember, when I was home on leave. Oh, she was older than me, but I was still young and faintly fuzzy, and would have given up my hope of Heaven to have her smile at me. So—what’s the daughter like? Give us a hint.”

“Dangerous,” the duke heard himself saying before he could monitor his thoughts.

“Ah! Well, I like that!” Sir Wallace fairly shouted. “Dangerous, is it?” He turned to the Baron. “Either she walks about with a sword between her teeth, Lorrie, or we’ve got us another Constance Winstead. And, from the look on Bram’s face, I’d say it was the latter, wouldn’t you?” He sat up straight, rubbing his palms together. “Lead me to her, lads, and then make yourselves scarce.”

The duke would have told them then, told them the whole of it; everything he’d learned, everything he’d supposed. But that would have been betraying secrets Sophie had told him in confidence, secrets she had purposely told just to him, just to infuriate him. Confuse him. Confound him. Keep him awake half the night, not knowing whether he should toss her out on her fairly provocative rear, or try to comfort her for all the times the child in her had been hurt, been betrayed.

But there was something else, something that still bothered him. What if she hadn’t been so artless in her truths after all? Perhaps she had simply found a new way to dazzle him, a new way to charm herself into his sympathy and good graces, the way she had discovered his aunt’s weaknesses, Isadora’s weaknesses—and then used them to her own advantage.

After all, if he felt compassion for her, she could count on him to go out of his way to see that she wasn’t snubbed by anyone in society.

He just didn’t know, couldn’t be sure. When she told the truth he wasn’t sure. When she lied, he was even less sure.

And when she smiled? When he’d kissed her?

He really didn’t want to think about that.

“Bram? I say, Bram—you’re not answering me.”

The duke blinked away his thoughts and looked at Sir Wallace inquiringly, hoping the man would repeat his question. “Forgive me, Wally. I was woolgathering, I suppose.”

“Yes, Bram, we know. That’s what I just said. Woolgathering. Actually, I said you look sunk in a funk. Don’t tell me Miss Winstead frightens you? Not the same man who climbed into the riggings, cutting loose a mangled sail in the midst of a Channel storm.”

Lord Lorimar held up his hands, motioning for Sir Wallace to be silent. “What is it, Bram?” he asked, cocking his head to one side. “There’s something you’re not telling us. What’s the matter? Is the girl a complete loss? Is she so fat she needs to be rolled into a room? Pick at her teeth at table? Or is it something else? Perhaps she’s the beauty her mother was before her, and Miss Waverley wants her shot at dawn?”

Bram’s head shot up. “Isadora is not a jealous sort!”

“Ah-hah!” Lord Lorimar exclaimed. “And there you have it, Wally. The chit’s beautiful. Probably gorgeous. Well, there’s nothing wrong with that, now is there?”

“That would depend on how she plans to go on,” Bramwell pointed out, doing his best to say what he meant without really saying anything. “If it’s marriage she’s after in coming to London, as she says, then her beauty can only be considered a help—along with her very impressive personal wealth.”

Sir Wallace shook his head as if trying to rattle his brains into action. “Wait a moment! As she says, Bram? You don’t
believe
her? Why else would she be here? Why else are we bombarded with young misses and conniving mamas every Season, all powdered and primped and dressed to the nines—if not for the purpose of leading any number of us happy, carefree bachelors into marriage?”

“Just remember that when you meet her, Wally,” Bramwell answered warningly. “And you, too, Lorrie. Because the girl is out for marriage. As my aunt has already said, I believe we’re in for a siege. I wouldn’t want either of you trampled in the rush of gentlemen callers breaking down my front doors once Miss Winstead is presented. She’s going to break dozens of hearts, and I don’t want two of them to be yours.”

He knew he wasn’t being entirely honest with his friends, but what else could he say? He couldn’t say that he worried Sophie’s aim might be to go into Society in order to seek out some of her “uncles” and then embarrass them, even blackmail them—not because she needed the money, certainly, but just because she wanted to hurt them. He couldn’t say that she might be entering Society in order to purposely break hearts, to lead on as many men as she could, just to give back some of the pain she’d felt each time she watched another man leave her mother—leave her. He couldn’t say that she was here, in London, to play her own little game, run her own small rig on Society, then pick a titled gentleman to act as stud for her legitimate children—an older, titled peer who would then conveniently expire, leaving her to return to Society and wreak havoc with even more gullible gentlemen.

He couldn’t say any of that because, in his heart of hearts, he couldn’t really bring himself to believe any of it. He could only think about everything Sophie had said, about the way she had said it, about the way she had vehemently denied his accusations.

But what else was he supposed to think of a woman who had the body of a courtesan, the face of an angel, the deviousness of a court intriguer, and the most infuriating, chameleon-like way of making everyone she met believe that she was precisely who they needed her to be?

“Break our hearts, is it?” Lord Lorimar slapped his knees and rose to his feet, looking tall and blond and extremely handsome, the secret wish of many a debutante in Seasons past. “I think we’ve been insulted, Wally. Damme me if I don’t. As if we’re green-as-grass young bucks, about to succumb to the first pretty face we’ve ever seen. Tell you what, Bram—let’s have us a wager. Wally, you up for a wager?”

“What sort of wager?” Sir Wallace asked carefully. “None of this business where the loser has to stand up at Covent Garden at the intermission and pull down his trousers before making a backward bow toward the box across the way.”

“But you were splendid, Wally,” Bramwell said, smiling at the long-ago memory. So long ago. Perhaps a lifetime ago? No, not really. Only a half dozen or more years ago—before he had gone off to sea, before his father had run so publicly mad with the Widow Winstead. “It was only poor luck that Lady Radford had taken that moment to raise her lorgnette and do an inventory of that night’s attendance.”

“If it’s very, very quiet,” Lord Lorimar put in facetiously, “I believe I can still hear her shrieks. Oh, very well, Wally, if you’re going to be a spoilsport otherwise, we’ll make it something simpler. We won’t even call it a wager. We’ll call it a challenge—with a forfeit to be paid by any or all of us who fail to meet that challenge.”