The Art of Ruining a Rake (22 page)

Her brother glared at the empty space Lord Steepleton had recently occupied. “I’m not forcing him up to snuff, if that’s what has you in a tizzy.”

“Oh.” Her relief was palpable. She’d hate to think Roman was only being kind to her because of Trestin. When Roman had kissed her back last night… It was because he’d
wanted
to, not because Trestin had threatened him. She hoped.

She looked at her brother again. “You mislead me.”

Slowly, Trestin rolled his shoulders back. Uncoiling muscles that had tensed in preparation for—what, exactly? Had he been about to spar with Lord Steepleton? She knew he’d taken up pugilism at Gentleman Jackson’s again since their return to London. “You’re not required to wed Montborne.”

She let out a half laugh of disbelief. “It certainly seems so.”

“You may live here, you may write books and you may marry the marquis. Or not. Naturally, I will always be in favor of a wedding.”

She paced toward the window, then back. Calming herself. He hadn’t lied, per se. This was just another one of his dictates. If she wanted to be free of his conditions altogether, she must achieve financial independence. To do that, she must write her dratted book.

“Who were those men?” Trestin asked, his stony disapproval evident.

She supposed she did owe him an explanation after Lord Steepleton had been so rude. Trestin had done a smashing job of holding his tongue most of the week.

Even if he did have something of an ulterior motive.

“Friends of Roman’s,” she replied, deciding to keep the peace he’d forged with this house. “They were in attendance at Madame Claremont’s salon, and likely will be again tonight at Vauxhall. Lord Steepleton’s interest in literary circles isn’t clear to me, but Mr. Tewseybury runs a printing press.” Her heart leapt anew at the thought of W. E. Tewseybury & Co., the publisher of several prominent women’s works.

Trestin flexed his wrists. “I don’t like them.”

“You don’t know them!”

He snorted, irritating her despite her determination to be grateful to him. “You do?”

“Yes, well, we
will
be friends, eventually. If I’d gone for a stroll—”

“That,” Trestin clipped out, “will never happen. Not as long as I am here.”

“And how long
will
you be here?” she fired back. “Surely Celeste misses you.”

His expression turned bleak at her obvious attempt to see him back to Devon. “I’m trying to do my best by you, Lucy. Don’t you understand that?”

She tried to restore her control. For all intents and purposes, he
was
making an effort.

“I
am
enjoying my bit of freedom. I just wish…” She looked away from him. Why didn’t he see how much she chafed under his iron fist?

She swallowed back her next argument before she could berate her brother further. Young ladies were supposed to marry, and she had refused her duty. It wasn’t Trestin’s fault she was in this position. She was lucky to have him for a guardian when she might have ended as so many other unmarried burdens did, in the attics of distant cousin’s homes.

“My lord, Miss Lancester.” Mr. Gordo’s voice startled her. “Lord Montborne to see the lady.”

Lucy’s despair vanished. Hope flared in her breast.
He’d come!

To what purpose? And why, pray, did she care?

A muttered curse moved Trestin’s lips before he said, “Send him in.”

Lucy turned away from the door and went to the window, attempting to gather her wits before Roman scattered them again. Nervously, her hand went to her hair and began tucking strands back into her coiffure. Then she realized what she was doing and stopped. Trestin was the one who wanted her to capture Roman’s notice.
She
certainly didn’t.

When she turned around it was to see Roman taking up too much space with his too-large body. More polished Hessians, these with little tassels. Another fine waistcoat in a different deep blue. A new knot for his cravat, similar to the one she’d ruined last night. He idly pivoted his walking stick back and forth on its pointed end.

“Good afternoon, my lord,” she said as calmly as she could manage.

Roman tucked his walking stick under his arm. “Good afternoon to you, Miss Lancester. I thought I’d share this lovely day with a friend. Care to walk with me?”

Frustrated laughter broke from her. “If only you’d been here a moment earlier!”

He gave her a quizzical look, but didn’t press.

“I need to fetch my bonnet and walking boots,” she said, pointing her satin-slippered toe toward him. “Do you mind?”

He turned and walked the length of the small room with an air of nonchalance. “No trouble at all, Miss Lancester. I shall await you like the patient man I am.”

When she returned bundled up for the winter day, he escorted her from the foyer and into the street. They turned toward Hyde Park. “Tell me about your novel,” he said abruptly yet conversationally, as though he’d prepared a list of subjects he might broach in anticipation of their outing.

She was at once pleased and self-conscious. Her lack of progress wasn’t a subject she wished to discuss with anyone, let alone him. “There’s nothing to tell.”

“Surely you can think of one interesting tidbit to share with me. You dabble at it every day, don’t you?”

“I don’t
dabble,
” she said with some affront, “and you can’t have any interest in the plot of a silly book.”

He pulled an aggrieved face and clapped his walking stick to his heart. “She doesn’t think I like to read! But I do, Miss Lancester. I read every day.”

He could have announced he was about to take his seat in the House of Lords and she wouldn’t have been more stunned. “I’ve never heard of it!”

He prodded his walking stick between the cobblestones. “Because I read in bed, Miss Lancester.” He let that sink in.

When she was good and melted through at the image of him lying naked in bed with a book, he continued, “I’ve read every Miss Edgeworth, Mrs. Radcliffe and Miss Hays to come through Hatchard’s. I’m something of a connoisseur.”

“Of women’s works?” She didn’t hide her surprise. At her brother’s house, she’d been limited in her selection. Roman considered himself an expert on authoresses she’d only dreamed of reading. He had outdone her, in her own favorite subject!

His blue eyes twinkled. “We cannot think of them as women’s works, can we? That was the entire point of Mrs. Wollencraft’s treatises. Women’s contributions to society should not be inherently separated.”

Lucy was dumbstruck. The park entrance emerged ahead. She walked steadily toward it as myriad emotions tumbled through her.
Roman read!
Not just books, but staunchly feminine books.

“Why?” she asked, peering at him from the corner of her eye. “Surely you prefer tales of adventure.”

He touched the brim of his hat as they passed a couple she didn’t recognize. “To go with my thirst for gentlemanly pursuits? I think not, Miss Lancester.”

Did he truly seek out literature penned by women? Her stays were too tight. Surely that was why she could scarcely breathe. “P-poetry, then. Byron, or Mr. Keats—”

“No, Lucy.” Roman’s voice drenched over her like warm honey. “I like to read books written by women. It’s a simple matter of curiosity. When a man drafts a sentimental tale, be it poetry, fact or fiction, he wants to weep with every word. He wants to
feel
. But the same story written by a woman is vastly reasonable. One can see the churning of her mind. A novel written by a woman is bathed in her way of thinking. I learn a great deal about things I don’t know when I read books written by people who are not me.”

It was the most vastly reasonable thing Lucy had ever heard anyone say. She couldn’t believe it had come from Roman. She laced her fingers together in front of her and tried not to feel light-headed. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

He seemed embarrassed by the question. “When would I have done so?”

Her heart pounded against her breast. When, indeed? When he’d been kissing her, or on top of her, or whispering sweet nonsense in her ear?

He looked aside at her. His glance lasted but a moment, but the weight of his regard stayed with her. “Had I anything to offer you last year,” he said in a low voice, “I would have swept you away at your come-out ball. I’m glad I didn’t. This is much better than what I had in mind.”

Passerby moved alongside her in a blur; she felt and heard nothing but the pound of her heart.

She dearly needed to change the subject. What did he mean by things being better this way? She could go mad trying to understand him.

Furthermore, he’d just given her an idea. “I
do
have a tidbit to share, now that I think about it. My novel shall be a shocking tale of love and betrayal.” Those subjects, she understood.

“Is that so?” Roman said, smoothly adjusting to the direction in conversation. “And the title?”

“Title?” She hadn’t considered the title beyond her nonsense placeholder,
A Novel of Infinite Merit
.

“Or maybe that will come when the book is done?” He helped her step around a potted hole. “Who are the characters? Is the hero very daring? Is he…handsome?”

So many details to work through! It was unlike her to have a goal with no strategy. “There
is
a handsome hero,” she extemporized, “and a heroine, too… Their names are…James and Caroline.”

“James! How delightful.”

She belatedly remembered Lord Steepleton’s name was James. An unfortunate mistake. “Everyone is named James, my lord.”

“Not everyone,” he said, raising his walking stick to push aside a low tree branch hanging across her path. “Not me. I always liked the name James, if you must know. James Valerius Alexander. It has a nice ring to it.”

“But your name is so—so
Roman
!”

He laughed. “Lads with peculiar names always want staid ones. I would have made an excellent Henry, don’t you think?”

She couldn’t imagine it. “That’s blasphemous!”

“I’m fairly certain it’s not,” he teased her. “What about you? Have you always liked the name Lucilla?”

Her full name rolled off his tongue and straight to her core. “G-goodness, no. I should have been an exotic
Melisende
.”

She was fairly certain her ears were ringing.

“Terribly unfair,” Roman agreed, unaware of how desperately she wanted to hear him say her name again. “At least you were never teased about it. Imagine my lot at Eton, where boys are expected call each other by their given names. My brothers and I were destined to be pestered, what with names like Bartholomew, Constantine and Darius. Your brother did well enough. Ashlin is a regular sort of name, and can be shortened to a solid-sounding
Ash,
while we Alexanders were forced to endure ribbing all the way up until Cambridge.”

“You still call him Ashlin,” Lucy realized, feeling as though she’d put two oddly shaped puzzle pieces together.

“He’s very much like one of my own brothers. When we were children, he was my only ally. Besides, can’t think of him as Trestin. Never could. That was…”

“Our father’s title,” she finished for him, finding it unexpected he would attach any emotional significance to her father’s memory. But then he was older, and had known the late Lord Trestin as something of an uncle, or a peer. She recalled their exploits turning up in the same scandal sheets on occasion.

She didn’t want to think about her father. Or of Roman being birds of a feather with her father.

“I think my brother
had
to become Trestin to me. Else I would heed his direction even less than I do.”

Roman flicked a pebble out of her path with his walking stick. She was beginning to grasp how useful his seemingly for-show adornment could be.

“He did well with you girls, all things considered. Being appointed guardian of one’s nearly-adult siblings is no easy task.”

“I suppose not.” Again she had the uneasy sense Roman knew more about her family’s inner workings than she’d supposed. He and Trestin had more in common than just their age. They had both come into their titles too early, succeeding wastrel fathers who had left their respective estates in ruins.

“And just what
is
going to happen to poor James and Caroline?” This time it was Roman’s transparent attempt to move the conversation back to neutral ground. “I hope it’s enough to bring poor James to his knees.”

“Mhmm,” she said noncommittally, not wanting to admit she had no plan.

“You might make a list of the various ways you can torment him,” Roman suggested helpfully.

A list? A thrill shot through her as she realized she finally had jurisdiction over something in her life. “Then he shall suffer greatly,” she said, unable to hide her smile.

On the page, she could do anything.

“‘Greatly’ might be disproportionate to his crime,” Roman drawled, his tongue-in-cheek tone turning her smile into a chuckle. “It depends on the theme of their journey. Which did you choose? Love? Forgiveness? Failure? Or perhaps you want me to wait and see for myself. I intend to be your most loyal and avid reader.”

The thought of him perusing her innermost thoughts made her blistering hot. “It’s love,” she said quickly, because that seemed the easiest. Forgiveness…