Taming Beauty (17 page)

Though how the girl had come to suspect Lilith might possess anything of the sort was something of a mystery.

As Dunaway’s carriage trundled over miles of rutted roads, past fields of grain waving in the wind and endless stretches of moorland dotted with sheep and the occasional scrubby tree and rock outcropping, Lilith even found herself missing Sissy’s lofty lamentations.

In fact, she would have welcomed them in any language, even Prussian with its jagged stops and starts, if only to slice through the silence.

Dunaway, ever restless and unable to sit still, spent much of the journey on horseback, leaving Lilith alone with her thoughts.

Those thoughts were weighty, as heavy and thick as the angry gray clouds gathering over London as they approached the city she’d called home her entire life.

Lilith didn’t feel as if she were coming home. Instead she felt as if she were venturing into a foreign land, alone and uncertain of her welcome.

The odd sensation only increased with each street traversed and every corner turned until the carriage finally reached The Strand.

After four years living on the busy street running along the bend in the River Thames, Lilith had become accustomed to the cacophony of noise accompanying the constant hustle and bustle of carriages, carts and horses in the road and pedestrians ambling along the walkways.

She’d always fancied there was a certain unwieldy rhythm to the sounds, rather like an orchestra of musicians unused to playing together but game for the challenge nonetheless.

Only today the noise was deafening, a dissonance of shouting, banging and assorted discordant sounds Lilith vaguely remembered from the year previously when Hillsborough House had been demolished to make way for a new thoroughfare to the river.

Lilith slid across the seat and looked out the window, only mildly surprised to see workmen crawling over scaffolding erected along the front façade of Dunellen House. More men scurried out of the open door carrying furnishings and fixtures to carts parked at the street.

Dunaway rode up beside the carriage on his black gelding, shouting orders to his driver to take it slow in order to avoid any debris in their path. The dawdling pace allowed Lilith a good look at the grand old house which, by the looks of things, would soon be but a memory.

It would be the third house on the south side of The Strand to be demolished in the four years Lilith had resided on the Thames. While she was practical enough to appreciate the need for additional roads to accommodate the traffic between Blackfriars Bridge and the city proper, she hated to see the opulent old mansions go.

The carriage crept past a sprawling house built along Roman lines, with towering columns supporting an ornate domed portico and two huge marble lions standing sentinel beside the door. The gray stone façade was polished to a high sheen, the tall windows topped with heavy, elaborate cornices. The house had always struck Lilith as something of a relic of by-gone days, stubbornly clinging to old-fashioned customs while all around it the world changed with the times.

Rather like its current inhabitant.

A short distance beyond the Romanesque ode to a long lost era stood an imposing baroque monstrosity complete with pointed, arched windows and gargoyles lined up along the roof staring down at anyone daring enough to approach the heavy, intricately carved wooden doors. The house had been designed and built by a gentleman with more money than sense, and as far as Lilith could fathom, solely to annoy and aggravate his neighbor.

Wedged between the two ostentatious dwellings sat a quaint three-story, red brick and timber cottage. Constructed after the Great Fire had ravaged the stately homes along the river, Charmed Crossing had been in Dunaway’s family for generations. With its proximity to various entertainments and its discreet river access, Charmed Crossing had traditionally housed the earls’ mistresses.

Gwendolyn had refused to step foot in the cozy little cottage, insisting Dunaway purchase the house in Hanover Square before she entered into an arrangement with him.

Lilith could hardly blame her mother. The area was no longer fashionable and the river had long since swallowed the boat dock along with the steps leading up to the back gardens. The house listed slightly to the left, the wood floors were warped, the slate roof leaked from time to time and the old mullioned windows allowed the winter wind to seep into every cramped room.

Still, the little house tucked away from the road behind an orderly garden of neatly pruned rosebushes and hedgerows was as close to a home as Lilith had ever known.

And two feuding brothers wanted it enough to pay a pretty penny to claim it.

At two and twenty, the ninth Baron Malleville had arrived in London believing the city to be the center of the world, a testament to English superiority, a gathering place for learned men and elegant women, and above all else, a mecca for all things enlightened.

He’d departed after only three months believing London nothing more than a stinking cesspool of thievery, dissipation and desperation. He’d held to that belief for twelve years, shunning all things London, from fashions to friends to gossip.

Upon his long unanticipated and unheralded return, Jasper discovered the city was all he remembered and then some.

Bigger, certainly. Louder and dirtier. The stench of the river and refuse, along with a hundred other rancid aromas he made no effort to identify, filled his nostrils and clung to the back of his throat.

And he’d be damned if it wasn’t more crowded. Everywhere people rushed about—peddlers, ragged urchins, laborers, servants, clerks, well-to-day ladies and gentlemen. They swarmed the walkways and crossed the street at all angles, never mind the fancy carriages and beer carts whizzing by.

Jasper’s first stop upon arriving in Mayfair, that bastion of wealth, privilege and pedigree, was Grosvenor Square where he learned the Earl of Dunaway was not in residence. Nor was he anticipated to return any time soon.

If he couldn’t run the earl to ground, Jasper would have to make do with his daughter. Thus, he found himself in Hanover Square at the home of the notorious Gwendolyn Aberdeen.

An ancient butler showed Jasper to a parlor garishly decorated in crimson velvet and gold silk, a portrait of a stunningly lovely, dark-haired woman dressed in nothing but a pair of red slippers hanging over the mantle.

The same woman, elegantly adorned in a deep purple gown, was shooing a half-dressed young buck from the settee when the butler cleared his throat.

“Oh, Baron Malleville, how positively divine to meet you.” Gwendolyn Aberdeen dipped a curtsy, baring a good bit of bosom and studying Jasper with big, brown doe eyes.

That she was beautiful came as no surprise to Jasper. The resemblance between mother and daughter was something of a revelation, as he would have sworn Lilith was her father’s daughter through and through. But the resemblance was there in the tilt of her chin, in the shape of her nose and in the small, mocking smile curling up one corner of her lips.

Over the next twenty minutes, Lilith’s mother served Jasper tea and biscuits, brought him up to the mark on the latest gossip about the Prince Regent and flirted with him in a manner he suspected was second nature.

She also claimed to be unaware of her daughter’s whereabouts. “It’s been years since Lilith felt the need to consult with me as to her coming and goings. If Dun were in Town, he might know where to find her. Unfortunately, he departed for the country three days ago. The imminent birth of an heir and all that.”

“You haven’t seen your daughter in three days?” Jasper asked, not certain why the knowledge had his temper fraying.

“I haven’t seen Lilith in months, perhaps a year.”

“Lilith doesn’t live here with you?”

“We don’t get on well,” she replied with a delicate shrug of one shoulder, the gesture so reminiscent of Lilith his heart gave an extra thump in recognition. “Too alike I suppose.”

“You’ve no idea where your daughter is currently living?” Damn the proprieties, Jasper rose to stand, glaring down at the shallow, self-absorbed woman sitting before him batting her eyes and smiling a siren’s smile while admitting she’d lost track of her only child for the better part of a year.

Jasper had a sudden recollection of Lilith worrying Meg wouldn’t make it from the hills she’d been gamboling across her entire life to the house without becoming lost. And here this woman worried not at all for her own daughter’s safety.

“She took up residence with my mother in Bloomsbury for a time.” If Gwendolyn recognized Jasper’s poor manners or growing anger, she gave so sign of it. “But that was three or four years past, and she didn’t stay long. Oh, yes, I seem to recall she moved into one of Dun’s properties. But last I heard he’d sold the house, so I suppose Lilith must have relocated elsewhere.”

Good God, the woman rivaled Dunaway for the honor of worst parent of the century.

“You say your mother lives in Bloomsbury?” Jasper asked, already turning for the door.

“Lilith would hardly move back in with Mother,” Gwendolyn said. “She has puritanical leanings, Lilith does, and Mother’s household is rather boisterous. Perhaps you ought to call upon the Duke of Cheltenham.”

Jasper spun around and advanced two steps back into the tacky parlor.

“His Grace and Lilith are fast friends,” Gwendolyn said, all wide-eyed innocence. “Kindred spirits, Mother says. The Duke might know where she’s gotten off to.”

After a futile trip to Bloomsbury, only to discover Alabaster Sinclair had set off for Edinburgh with Miss Harry O’Connell the day before, Jasper reined in his mount in front of a stately gray-stoned mansion on The Strand.

Of course the Duke of Cheltenham was not at home to the Cornish baron who presented himself attired in a dusty coat twelve years out of fashion, a wilted cravat and mud-spattered boots.

Jasper considered pushing past the supercilious butler and the dozen footmen lurking in the dimly lit great hall, but he’d likely get lost in the mausoleum for hours and still not find the Duke of Cheltenham.

With a muttered curse, he retreated down the steps and walked to the edge of the street.

His horse gave a whinny in greeting, or more likely in despair. The poor old fellow had been ridden harder in the last two days than in the two years previously.

He supposed he could walk his horse to a hotel somewhere nearby, get cleaned up and return in hopes His Grace would deign to allow him inside the hallowed halls of his home.

Taking in his surroundings, he saw a huge gothic house on the corner with what appeared to be stone dragons and bats sprouting up along the rooftop. Jasper had read about the grotesque water spouts, he’d even seen paintings of them, but he couldn’t remember actually seeing a gargoyle up close.

It wasn’t until he’d almost reached the baroque edifice that he realized there was a red-brick house tucked between the two behemoths. Fronted by a tidy garden of boxy hedgerows laid out in geometric formations and blooming roses of every imaginable color, the house was old and rundown but charming nonetheless.

With a hoot of laughter, Jasper reached into his breast pocket for the torn and tattered piece of yellowing parchment he’d been carrying around for more than a fortnight.

Charmed Crossing
.

When he’d found the deed beneath the clutter on his desk the day after Dunaway and his daughters had decamped from Breckenridge House, he’d suspected it to be some sort of joke. A parting shot from the lot of them to top off the humiliation of losing both his bride and his fortune.

In a fit of self-righteous indignation fueled by half a bottle of whiskey, he’d very nearly tossed the deed into the fire. After all, what did he need with a ramshackle house slowly slipping into The Thames? It would likely cost more to shore up the house than it would fetch on the market.

In the end, he’d tucked the deed into his pocket, determined to keep it with him always, a talisman against future foolishness.

Only it hadn’t served as a talisman, but rather as a relentless reminder of the woman who’d waltzed into his world, blithely knocked it off its axis and left behind a crater the size of Cornwall where his heart had once resided.

Thus this misbegotten journey to return the deed to a decrepit old house. If not to Dunaway himself, then to his beautiful, wicked, scheming daughter. It hardly mattered, so long as the memories of the woman went the same way as the worthless deed.

Only, unless he was very much mistaken, the deed wasn’t worthless at all, and the house was the same derelict property two brothers had been fighting over for decades.

And Jasper owned it, from the dormer windows poking out from the gabled roof, to the weathered timber and crumbling bricks, to the pink and white roses climbing the small portico.

The door and all the windows were open, likely in deference to the unseasonably warm spring weather. Jasper took the pebbled path between two neat hedgerows at a clip and stepped into a narrow, dimly lit foyer. He turned to the open doorway on his left and poked his head inside to find a spacious, sunlit room decorated in shades of pale green and yellow. Surely it was the formal parlor, though it was empty of furniture but for a pianoforte carefully wrapped in bed covers.

If he’d needed further proof he’d found Charmed Crossing, Jasper had only to look around at the organized chaos of a household preparing to vacate the premises.

Boxes and crates were piled in the corners of the parlor. Paintings were stacked three and four deep around the perimeter of the room, the walls sporting dark patches where they’d once hung. A pyramid of trunks rose from the center of the room, tipping precariously to one side.

He stepped into the parlor, carefully circling an open crate overflowing with straw and packed with various curios, from a silver candle stick to porcelain statuary to what appeared to be a collection of antique inkwells. From the back of the house, Jasper heard muted conversation and the clank of pots and pans. From above stairs came the unmistakable sound of a large piece of furniture being pushed, pulled or otherwise moved across the floor.

A masculine chuckle drifted from across the hall, followed by heavy footfalls moving away at a quick, no-nonsense pace.

Jasper followed the sounds back into the foyer in time to see a tall, stooped-shouldered older man dressed in butler’s garb push open a door and disappear on the other side.

Intent upon catching up with the servant, Jasper walked past a pair of double doors thrown open to reveal a library. He glanced into the room only long enough to catch a glimpse of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves empty but for a few knick-knacks and a woman rooting through a box on the floor. Sunlight from the window at her back limned her slender form and gilded the sleek cap of close-cropped tawny tresses on her bent head.

Halting mid-stride, his heart beating out a queer tattoo for no reason he could fathom, Jasper backtracked to the open doorway.

Surely it was only a maid packing up the last of the books. Just a servant with the shortest hair he’d ever seen on a woman.

Only it wasn’t a maid at all.

Lilith Aberdeen knelt amid a miscellaneous assortment of bric-a-brac, her lavender skirts twisted around her legs to expose white stockings and scuffed gray half-boots, straw and crumpled news sheets littering the floor around her.

“I know perfectly well I’m dithering again, Mr. Smithers.” She spoke without so much as glancing up, entirely unaware she’d set Jasper’s pulse to pounding. “It’s only an inkwell, and an ugly one at that. Ah, here it is.”

Plucking a squat, tarnished bronze inkwell from the box, she settled on her heels, her gaze lowered to the object she held in her hands with an odd sort of reverence.  

Jasper took an unsteady step into the library, confusion and a vague sense of wonder mingling with the banked fury he’d been living with since she’d climbed into her father’s carriage two weeks past.

“Whoever heard of an inkwell collection?” Lilith asked with a shake of her shorn head, wispy tendrils of hair fanning her forehead, curling behind her ear and just barely flirting with the soft angle of her jaw. “Leave it to Lord Dunaway to collect something so utterly ridiculous.”

Unable to catch his breath, to marshal his thoughts into coherent words, Jasper remained mute while he drank in the sight of her lowered profile, the sweep of her dark lashes, the sculpted bones of her cheek, the pale skin of her exposed nape, the long graceful column of her neck and the twist of her lips.

Jesus, that quirky little twist of her lips, not quite a smile though not truly a smirk. He realized he’d missed it, despaired of ever again seeing it or the woman who wore it with such aplomb.

“I ought to sell the lot of them.” Lilith set the inkstand on the floor and swiped a hand across her brow. “On second thought, I’ll store them away in Alabaster’s attic with my things.” 

Jasper’s lips parted in preparation to speaking when her words hit him with the force of a cudgel. The paintings, the pianoforte, the motley assortment of bric-a-brac.

No doubt the pyramid of trunks held all her possessions. Keepsakes and mementoes from her childhood, gifts from her grandmother and great-grandmother, perhaps from her sisters. Her entire life had been packed away in boxes and crates and trunks.

Hell and damnation, the cottage situated on a scrap of swampland between two feuding brothers was Lilith’s home. And she’d sacrificed it to Dunaway’s skullduggery.

On the heels of that thought came another, and another and another, unraveling like a heavy chain, each link a piece of the truth he’d been too bloody stupid to comprehend.

Lilith in the churchyard fretting over his happiness, or lack thereof, should he remain dogged in his refusal to release Lady Priscilla from the misalliance of their impending marriage.

Lilith halting a pall-mall match on the south lawn to vociferously defend his honor, actions, and choices at no little indignity to herself.