Slightly Dangerous (3 page)

And so the one little rebellion he had allowed himself in the years since Lady Marianne Bonner was to remain single. And to satisfy his needs with Rose. He had found her and brought her under his protection less than two months after that disastrous evening.

But now Rose was dead—and buried at his expense in a country churchyard close to the smithy. The Duke of Bewcastle had astonished the neighborhood for miles around by attending the funeral in person.

Why the devil had he agreed to go to Schofield Park with Mowbury? Had he done so only because he was not looking forward to returning alone to Lindsey Hall—and yet could not bear the thought of staying in London either? It was a poor reason even if Mowbury
did
have a well-informed mind and lively conversation and there was every hope that the other guests would match him. Even so, it would have been better to spend the summer touring his various properties in England and Wales, and perhaps calling in on his brothers and sisters as he went. But no—that latter was not a good idea. They all had their own lives now. They all had spouses and children. They were all happy. Yes, he believed they really were—all of them.

He rejoiced for them.

The Duke of Bewcastle, very much alone in his power and the splendor of his person and the magnificence of the London mansion surrounding him, continued to stare off into space as he tapped his steepled fingertips against his chin.

2

B
ARON
R
ENABLE
’
S CARRIAGE CAME RATHER EARLY IN
the morning to fetch Christine to Schofield Park. Melanie, looking harried, gratefully accepted her offer to help with some final preparations. Christine made a brief visit to her appointed chamber—a small box room at the back of the house wedged between two chimneys, both of which blocked the view from the window and gave her only a narrow glimpse of the kitchen garden below—in order to take off her bonnet, fluff up her curls, and unpack her meager belongings. She then dashed up to the nursery to greet the children and spent the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon being rushed off her feet with various errands. She might have run for the rest of the day if Melanie had not suddenly spotted her in the middle of the afternoon dashing upstairs with an armful of towels for one of the more opulent guest chambers and shrieked in protest at her appearance.

“You simply
must
get dressed, Christine,” she said faintly, one hand over her heart, “and do something with your hair. I said you might
help
. I did not intend that you be treated like a
maid
. Are those really
towels
over your arm? Go to your room this instant, you wretch, and start behaving like a guest.”

Less than half an hour later Christine appeared downstairs clad decently if not dazzlingly in her second-best sprigged muslin with her curls freshly brushed to a shine. She positively despised the fact that she was nervous—and that she had allowed herself to be trapped into this. She could be in the middle of giving her weekly geography lesson at the school now and actually enjoying herself.

“Oh, there you are,” Melanie said when Christine joined her in the hall. She grabbed one of her hands and squeezed it rather painfully. “This is going to be such
fun,
Christine. If only I have not forgotten anything. And if only I do not vomit when I see guests approaching. Why do I always want to vomit on such occasions? It is really quite ungenteel.”

“As usual,” Christine assured her, “everything will go so dazzlingly well that you will be declared the summer’s finest hostess.”

“Oh, do you think so?” Melanie set one hand over her heart as if to still its erratic beating. “I like your hair short, Christine. I almost had a fit of the vapors when you told me you were going to have it cut, but you look young and pretty again, as if someone had turned back the calendar just for you—not that you were ever
not
pretty. I am mortally jealous.
What
was that you said, Bertie?”

But Lord Renable, a short distance away, had merely cleared his throat with a long rumbling sound.

“Carriage approaching, Mel,” he said. “Here we go.” He regarded her gloomily, as if they were expecting the bailiffs to invade Schofield Park and haul off all their earthly possessions. “You go upstairs and hide, Christine. You can have another hour of freedom yet, I daresay.”

Melanie tapped his arm none too gently and drew a deep and audible breath. She appeared to grow three inches and was instantly transformed into a gracious, aristocratic hostess who had never in her life felt a single qualm of nerves or tendency to vomit in a crisis.

Though a relapse did threaten when she looked down suddenly and realized that she had a half-full glass of lemonade in her right hand.

“Take this, someone!” she commanded, looking around for the closest footman. “Oh, gracious me, I might have spilled it over someone’s boots or muslins.”

“I’ll take it,” Christine said, laughing and suiting action to words. “And spilling it over someone sounds far more like something I would do than you, Melanie. I’ll take myself and the lemonade out of harm’s way.”

She escaped up the stairs on her way toward the primrose sitting room, where the other lady guests were to join her. For some reason known only to herself, Melanie always kept the ladies and gentlemen apart at her parties until she was free to welcome them all to the drawing room for the tea that was the official opening of festivities.

But she paused on the landing, which curved back above the hallway so that one could look down over the banister. The carriage Bertie had heard must have been closer than he thought. The first guests were already stepping inside, and Christine could not resist looking to see if they included anyone she knew.

They were two gentlemen. One of them—carelessly dressed in a brown coat that was wrinkled and too large for him, dark blue pantaloons that bagged slightly at the knee, scuffed boots that had seen better days, a cravat that appeared to have been thrown about his neck with haste and without any reference to either a mirror or a valet, shirt points that drooped without benefit of starch, and fair hair that stuck out in all directions as if he had that moment lifted his head from the pillow—was Hector Magnus, Viscount Mowbury.

“Ah, it’s you, is it, Mel?” he said, smiling vaguely at his sister as if he had expected someone else to greet him at her house. “How d’you do, Bertie?”

Christine smiled affectionately and would have called down if it had not been for the gentleman with him. He could not have been more the antithesis of Hector if he had tried. He was tall and well formed and dressed with consummate elegance in a coat of blue superfine over a waistcoat of embroidered gray with darker gray pantaloons and white-topped, shining Hessian boots. His neckcloth was tied neatly and expertly but without ostentation. His starched shirt points hugged his jaw just so. Both garments were sparkling white. He held a tall hat in one hand. His hair was dark and thick, expertly cut and neatly worn.

His shoulders and chest looked broad and powerful beneath the exquisite tailoring, his hips slender in contrast, and his thighs very obviously in no need of a tailor’s padding.

But it was not so much his impressive appearance that held Christine silent and rooted to the spot, spying when she ought to have moved on. It was more his utter assurance of manner and bearing and the proud, surely arrogant, tilt to his head. He was clearly a man who ruled his world with ease and exacted instant obedience from his inferiors, who would, of course, include almost every other living mortal—a fanciful thought, perhaps, but she realized that this must be the infamous Duke of Bewcastle.

He looked everything she had ever been led to expect of him.

He was an aristocrat from the topmost hair on his head to the soles of his boots.

She could see something of his face as Melanie and Bertie greeted him and he bowed and then straightened. It was handsome in a cold, austere way, with stern jaw, thin lips, high cheekbones, and a prominent, slightly hooked, finely chiseled nose.

She could not see his eyes, though. He moved almost directly beneath her as Melanie turned her attention back to Hector, and Christine leaned slightly over the banister rail at the very moment when he tipped back his head and looked up and spotted her.

She might have drawn back in instant embarrassment at being caught spying if she had not been so startled by the very eyes she had been trying to see. They seemed to bore right through her head to the back of her skull. She could not be sure of the color of those eyes—pale blue? pale gray?—but she was not too far away from them to feel their effect.

No wonder he had such a reputation!

For one fleeting moment she was given the distinct impression that the Duke of Bewcastle might well be a very dangerous man. Her heart thudded painfully in her chest as if she had just been caught in the act of peeping into a room through a forbidden knothole in the door at some scandal proceeding within.

And then something extraordinary happened.

He
winked
at her.

Or so it seemed for yet another fleeting moment.

But then, even as her eyes widened in shock, Christine could see that he was swiping at the eye that had winked, and she realized that when she had bent forward over the rail so had the glass in her hand. She had dripped lemonade down into the eye of the Duke of Bewcastle.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “I am so terribly sorry.”

And then she turned and scurried away as fast as her legs would carry her. How excruciatingly embarrassing! How horridly clumsy of her! She had promised not to trip over his feet on the very first day, but it had not occurred to her also to promise not to pour lemonade in his eye.

She desperately hoped this was no harbinger of things to come.

She must compose herself before any of the ladies joined her, she thought after she had arrived safely in the primrose salon. And she must stay well out of the orbit of the Duke of Bewcastle for the next thirteen and a half days. It really ought not to be difficult. He probably would not even recognize her when he saw her again. And she was not the sort of person he would notice in the normal course of things.

The Duke of Bewcastle could not, despite the fact that she had inadvertently assaulted him with lemonade, be even the slightest bit dangerous to someone as lowly as she.

And why should she be so discomposed by him anyway? He was not the sort of man she could ever wish to impress.

I
T WAS LEMONADE
, Wulfric soon realized. But while lemonade might be a refreshing enough drink for those who did not wish to imbibe wine or something stronger on a warm day, it was certainly not a comfortable eye wash.

He did not complain aloud. The Renables appeared to have noticed nothing amiss even though the creature who had spilled it on him from the gallery above had had the impertinence to call down an apology and then scamper away like a frightened rabbit—as well she might. The Renables were busy with Mowbury.

Wulfric wiped his eye with a handkerchief and hoped it did not look as bloodshot as it felt.

But it was not an auspicious beginning to a two-week visit. No servants in any of his own establishments would remain long in his employ if they spied upon guests, spilled liquids on them, apologized aloud, and then ran away. He hoped this was just an aberration and not a sign of poor, slipshod service to come.

The creature had not even been wearing a cap. He had been given a distinct impression of bouncing curls and a round face and big eyes, though he had not, of course, had a good look at her.

Which fact he did not in any way regret.

He dismissed her from his mind. If the Renables could not control their own servants, then poor service was ultimately their concern, not his. He did, after all, have a valet with him to see to his personal needs.

He still had hopes that the house party at Schofield Park would be to his taste. Mowbury, a man in his thirties who had read voraciously and traveled extensively, especially in Greece and Egypt, had been an interesting companion during the long journey from London. They had known each other and been friends of sorts for years. The Renables greeted him affably. His room was an elegant, spacious apartment overlooking the lawns and trees and flower beds at the front of the house.

After changing into fresh clothes and sitting before the dressing room mirror while his valet shaved him, he went down to the billiard room, where the gentlemen had been asked to gather, and discovered the Earl of Kitredge and Viscount Elrick there ahead of him. Both gentlemen were older than he, and he had always found them congenial company. It was a promising sign. Mowbury and his younger brother, Justin Magnus, were there too. Wulfric had never had any dealings with Magnus, but he seemed an amiable young man.

Perhaps this was, after all, just the thing for him, Wulfric thought as he settled into conversation. He would enjoy two weeks of interesting company and then be ready to return to Lindsey Hall for the rest of the summer. After all, one could not become a hermit simply because one’s brothers and sisters had all married and one’s mistress had died.

And then the door opened again and he heard two extremely unpleasant sounds—feminine giggles and male laughter. Male and female voices mingled in a flurry of merry sound. The ladies went on their way; a large group of gentlemen came inside the room. And there was not one among them, Wulfric estimated, who was above twenty-five years of age. And not one of them—if he was to judge by their laughter and posturing and swaggering—who had a brain in his head.

And if he was not very much mistaken, just as large a group of their female counterparts had just walked by.

They were the very people who filled London ballrooms every Season for the grand marriage mart. They were the very reason why he avoided all such entertainments unless circumstances absolutely forced him to attend.

They were his fellow guests.