Scandal's Reward (3 page)

Thus Charlotte Clay had her own establishment in London, where she was able to enjoy the giddy life of the
beau monde
as a respectable childless widow, past the age, at thirty-seven, of being expected to compete in the marriage mart. Sir George, on the contrary, was still entirely dependent on his grandfather for his allowance. Obviously, the difference grated.

“Dang me if it ain’t a trial to have an older sister! Charlotte would stop at Bath to visit grandfather. Old Percy must be eighty if he’s a day, and he was having the worst attack of the gout. Just about had his manservant throw us out. Been taking the waters, he said, and didn’t need a lot of money-grubbing relatives trying to hurry him into his grave. He may be your father, Mama, but he’s a damned old curmudgeon.”

Lady Montagu, who had been clinging all this time to her son’s arm, was being shaken off, none too gently, so she released him and straightened her cap. “Yes, well, apart from Charlotte, we are all dependent on him for everything. He was very overset about what happened with Dagonet, you know. I’m surprised it didn’t kill him when he struck your cousin from the will. You know Dagonet was always Papa’s favorite and Lion Court was always expected to go to him, just as my sister was his favorite when we were girls. But the marquis has left you his fortune now and makes you the most generous allowance; it is only right that you should pay him your respects.”

“Well, Charlotte would bore on to Grandfather about Mr. Clay until I thought he would strike me from the will there and then. And she had to indulge in a fit of plain speaking about his drinking too much port. I thought the old miser would have apoplexy. Say, isn’t there anywhere a fellow can get a drink in this house?”

Lady Montagu instantly, and with a touching solicitation, began to shepherd her son toward the drawing room.

Catherine tactfully began to make her escape, when for no reason she could name, George’s next remark made her stop, her pulse suddenly unsteady.

“Actually it’s because of Devil Dagonet that Charlotte and I decided to come down, Mama. Now that the war’s over, he can’t make a living as a soldier anymore. I heard he’s already been seen in England. Now, don’t turn vaporish! I’ve prepared a suitable reception should he dare to show his face here at Lion Court.”

* * * *

Sir George and Charlotte were, of course, expected. Catherine had helped prepare for their visit, principally by running up and downstairs with the housekeeper and seeing to everything herself while her mistress lay prostrate with expectation on the drawing room couch. Sir George was to occupy the room he had used as a child, and Charlotte the best blue guest chamber. They were both handsome rooms in the most modern wing with large marble fireplaces and sweeping views of the grounds.

Catherine was not sure why, when she had been standing with the housekeeper in the gracious hallway before Sir George’s bedroom door, she had suddenly said, “Where did Charles de Dagonet have his room? I see no other suitable bedchamber in this wing.”

It had already struck her that there was not a single portrait of the reprobate’s family on display in the house. Until Sir George’s arrival, the name of Devil Dagonet had not been mentioned, nor did Lady Montagu ever talk about her deceased sister. One would think that the de Dagonet family had never lived there.

“No, ma’am,” the housekeeper replied. “After the Montagus moved in, Sir George—Master George as he was then—took his cousin’s room and young Master Charles moved up over there.”

And why had she then gone where the housekeeper pointed, up the winding stair and along the balcony that ran around the library into the little chamber that the orphaned boy had taken after the arrival of his relatives at Lion Court, and which he had left, ten years later, in such disgrace?

The room was an oddity, tucked in below the roof and above the entrance hall, and Spartan in its furnishings. It commanded views of the drive in three directions from a bank of ornamental windows. It could not have been intended as a bedchamber, because there was no fireplace and in winter the little room could only have been damp and cold. Now, however, with the early September sunlight streaming in the south windows it was positively stuffy.

Catherine opened a casement. The room was not dusty. Nowhere in Lion Court escaped the efficient ministrations of its army of servants, but it couldn’t have been used since Dagonet had left. Curious, she ran her finger along the rank of books and papers above the narrow bed. There were titles in Greek and Latin, French and English. She stopped and pulled out several thin volumes. They were scores for violin, piano, harpsichord, all the great composers and some more obscure. In another notebook, songs and sonnets were set to music in a flowing hand, many she was sure, quite original. Catherine sat down.

Whatever she had expected it had not been this! It made no sense at all. He had been known as a daredevil and an athlete.
‘It must have been very hard for him,’
her mother had said. He had liked music! A misfit in this blunt household with the red-faced Sir Henry. Yet he had casually destroyed poor Milly Trumble!

What was the truth about him? How had the country people’s hero gained such a dreadful reputation? She had a sudden vision of a ten-year-old boy waiting at home for the return of his beloved parents. His face must have lit up when he heard a carriage pull into the drive at last. What a terrible blow it must have been when instead his uncle, Sir Henry Montagu, had descended with news of the fatal accident! Had it been broken to the boy with any gentleness or understanding at all? From what she knew of Sir Henry, she doubted it.

Catherine replaced everything with care and went down thoughtfully to rejoin Lady Montagu and her children.

She was to play for them all after dinner. It had been a little uncomfortable during the meal, since Lady Montagu insisted over Charlotte’s better sensibilities that her companion dine with the family. Catherine had tried to keep the peace by at least dressing as plainly and conducting herself as meekly as possible. She wore a simple green dress that was cut high to the neck and possessed only one deep flounce around the hem.

As if to emphasize their difference in social status, Charlotte was arrayed in a dazzle of jewels. Diamond pendants swung from her ears, and a matching necklace lay around her short neck above the décolletage of her puce silk. Even Lady Montagu wore a set of pearls that Catherine had never seen before, and Sir George’s elaborate neckcloth was pinned with a diamond that matched the jewel on the face of his fob.

“The necklace becomes you, Mama,” Sir George said as they all went into the drawing room and Catherine folded back the lid of the piano. “I don’t know why you didn’t think it right to wear it.”

He winked at Charlotte.

“That is such a common gesture, George! The pearls look very well, Mama, but to speak plainly they would be better suited to a younger lady. I only wish Mr. Clay might have seen me in these.” She patted the earrings. “He liked to see me wear fine gems.”

“I own I cannot really like it, George,” Lady Montagu insisted. “We really have no right, even at a family dinner.”

“Yes, just a trifle vulgar, wouldn’t you say?”

A man stepped from the shadows at the corner of the room. Power and grace stalked each long stride. The muscled limbs and broad shoulders were elegantly dressed in immaculate evening clothes, but his dark hair tumbled over his forehead. In his right hand, almost casually, he held a pistol which seemed to have an unerring attraction for Sir George’s capacious chest.

Lady Montagu uttered a small scream and sat down. Catherine quietly put down the music book and stood, her heart thudding, beside the piano.

“What the devil do you mean by this?” Sir George’s face was puce above the folds of his cravat.

The stranger moved a little farther into the candlelight. His gaze was deep green and fathomless, like the sea. It was the rider of the gray Thoroughbred.

“What, no warm welcome for the prodigal returned from the pigsty, Charlotte? And cousin George? You look as if the ghost had just appeared before you on the battlements
: ‘How now, Horatio! you tremble and look pale: / Is not this something more than fantasy?’
I am not the harbinger of doom, my dears, only cousin Dagonet, back from Spain. Perfectly harmless, really!”

“The servants had instructions to show you the door, sir, as a scoundrel and a blackguard, if you ever showed your face here again.”

“Don’t be pompous, George! It doesn’t become you. I was, of course, turned away when I humbly presented myself at the front door. Such a lamentable lack of family feeling! But no matter, he who is denied entrance by the door must needs come in at the window.”

“What can you want here?” Lady Montagu said faintly. “Oh, this is all quite dreadful!”

“Then I am sorry to distress you, Aunt.” Dagonet bowed his head with perfect courtesy. “But I came among other things for the family jewels. Don’t move, George! If I were forced to kill you, there would be no one to inherit Lion Court from our grandfather. Charlotte, you really should take a seat and close your mouth.”

While George sputtered and the ladies wrung their hands, Devil Dagonet moved smoothly from one to another and divested them of their jewelry. Catherine, forgotten by the piano in her plain frock, moved as quietly as she might around the sofa and the Sheraton chairs to the bellpull beside the fireplace. So the insolent stranger on the moor had been the notorious Dagonet! He should not get away with stealing the jewelry if she could help it.

She had the bellpull in her hand and was about to give it a mighty pull, when the entire length of silk cord, suddenly severed, slithered past her arm and coiled on the floor at her feet. A small knife, expertly thrown, quivered in the cornice above her head.

Dagonet was looking straight at her, his eyebrows very slightly raised.

“I do not believe,” he said with unstudied grace, “that I have had the pleasure of making your acquaintance?”

She met his gaze steadily, though her breath was coming uncomfortably fast, as if she had just raced up six flights of stairs.

“My name is Catherine Hunter, sir. I am Lady Montagu’s companion. We met, in case you have forgotten, on the moor. It seemed to me to be about time to interrupt this melodramatic little scene by inviting in some other members of the household. I don’t suppose that even you can shoot both Sir George Montagu and the butler at the same time. However, you have severed the bellpull, and neatly prevented me from being the heroine of the hour.”

“Ah, the servants.” He seemed to consider for a moment. “Unaccountably, it has occurred to no one to scream, Miss Hunter. Perhaps the family do not wish any witnesses? Or,” he looked straight at George, “perhaps they do not wish me to meet certain members of the staff?”

Catherine stood her ground. “Perhaps they are simply embarrassed by childish games. It is already distressful enough for Lady Montagu to have a nephew whose name is used to frighten children in the village, without having the pearls removed from around her neck in her own drawing room. Not having any such scruples myself, of course, I could very well cry out for help.”

“And I do not frighten you, Miss Hunter? A brave young lady! I am, according to my own cousin, my companion from childhood, a scoundrel and a blackguard. Each member of the household has given me some token of their wealth. Since you are determined to be included in this family scene, is there nothing you can contribute to my venality? Nothing I can steal from you?”

Catherine hated the way she knew the color was rising in her cheeks as he walked slowly toward her. The sea-green gaze swept over her simple frock in the most insolent manner. For no good reason Annie’s silly words kept running through her mind,
‘He’s had tons of lovers,’
and Amy stating with such confidence,
‘It was because of his reputation with the ladies that they called him Devil Dagonet.’

He shall neither charm nor frighten me, she promised herself. He shall not. I shall scream if he comes a step closer. Yet her breathing was already shattered, out of control.

He thrust the pistol in his belt, stopped directly in front of her, and reached long fingers to her cheek. He brushed a stray wisp of hair from her neck and touched tenderly below her ear. She was desperately aware of the soft pressure of his fingers and of his clean, masculine scent: plain soap, and the outdoors, with perhaps the faintest hint of brandy.

“A lock of hair, perhaps?”

She met his gaze defiantly. There was something so magnetic and powerful about him! “I do not give you any such permission, sir.”

“But I must not disappoint our audience,” he said. “After all, I have my reputation to live up to. Since you refuse me the gift of your hair, Miss Hunter, I shall have to steal a kiss.”

Surely she could have cried out for the servants then, but she felt stunned into silence. For in the depths of his eyes she saw the last expression she would have expected: neither anger nor malice, only a rueful laughter, ruthlessly buried. Helpless with astonishment, Catherine lost all sense of where she was: the candlelit room, its scandalized occupants, all disappeared from consciousness as unwittingly she gave herself up to his embrace.

He tilted her head and his fine lips closed over hers. An aching sensitivity inflamed her blood. Her tongue tasted honey, tender and sweet. Strange delight flooded through her body: a terrible, wonderful anguish—like the gift of an angel!

Moments later he kissed her throat tenderly, then murmured against her ear.

“I apologize for not being sucked down in Rye Combe Bog as you directed. It did display scurrilous manners not to instantly die so, after treating you so cavalierly. Though it’s no excuse, I was rather preoccupied and, of course, I’ve known the track perfectly well since childhood. I hope you’ll forgive me, Miss Hunter, but please don’t call the servants. I don’t want to have to slay any of the footmen.”

He pulled away and crossed the room. No one had moved. They stood like pawns awaiting the hand of the chess master. Catherine felt bereft, her heart thundering.