The Art of Ruining a Rake (32 page)

“Come along,” he said when Lucy made to investigate the rest of the room’s contents. His mother would know the instant she returned that someone had entered her sanctuary.
 

Besides, he wanted to show Lucy the Face.

Lucy took his arm again and he led her to the billiards room. One sconce flickered inside the doorway, lit in the event one of his brothers—Tony, usually—wanted to stretch his arms. Roman took up the lamp and went about lighting the other candelabra in the room.

Lucy’s hands clasped before her. She looked around the room curiously. Ashlin had been right about Roman’s intentions tonight, much as it galled him to admit it. Seduction hadn’t been part of his plan. He wanted her to like him, to feel comfortable with him. Not just with the man he showed the world, but with who he was when no one was looking. It might not be the expedient way to get her to marry him, but it was the sincerest. He could use a few good intentions to cushion his fall from grace.

Before he could reveal his secrets, however, they must navigate the awkward stage of being alone. In his house.

“This room is so…masculine,” Lucy murmured, her whisper almost reverent.

Every bit of evidence she was aware of him buoyed him. “My brothers and I spend our evenings at play. Now, come this way. I want to show you the Face.”

“The face?” She came toward him.

He reached for her hand. Touching her was quickly becoming something he needed to do. He brought her before a marble bust whose frightened air was markedly different from the dignified miens carved onto the faces of great men.

This wasn’t a statesmen but a warrior, or perhaps a commoner who found himself in a warrior’s shoes. The man looked across his shoulder. His lips were parted yet silent, as if the horror he witnessed were so great, he couldn’t quite form a word of warning. Wide, vacant eyes protected Roman from knowing what terror condemned him to his death.

It was a bust, yes, but it was the
Face.

Lucy moved closer. “This is more than a fine marble! It has feeling
.
”

“An artifact of my mother’s choosing,” Roman replied diffidently. But did he want to pretend this sculpture didn’t take his breath away? No! The very reason he adored this marble was its unabashed emotion.

He half-turned so that he, too, was looking up at the unseen beast. “We’re told as men that we’re somehow less
when others know our fear. To the contrary, I think embracing one’s sensibilities humanizes him. It allows us to ask so many more questions of him, such as why? How? And, should I be afraid, too?”

Lucy looked away. Tentatively, she traced her first finger along the bust’s terror-stricken profile. “A true hero guards his emotions. He is an enigma.”

Roman nodded. “We commend him for his tortured past. Women love him for it. But how do you know he
is
tortured, unless you are given a glimpse into his mind? Perhaps he is selfish. He cares only for his own glory, his own satisfaction. Perhaps he is afraid. This is where the ancient Greeks excelled at portraying the inner fears all men experience. Hercules, Achilles, Odysseus. Our contemporaries’ praise of the solitary man affords dreadful ones a shield to hide behind. Who would freely admit to being mercenary or weak when he might be seen as valiant?”

She turned to him. “You would.”

“Yes, I would,” he said with some surprise. “But most wouldn’t. Men do doubt, Lucy. Never think otherwise.”

She drew her finger down a smooth fold in the statue’s hair. Roman felt her touch as surely as if she stroked his own curls.

“Is James afraid of Caro, my lord? Do you think I have written him to be braver than he feels?”

James
was
afraid of Caro. It was James who must ask for her hand. James who risked all.

Roman slid his arm around the bust, embracing it like a long-lost friend. “When a man is afraid of a woman, what he’s really afraid of is himself. If he were just
better,
he would succeed. Men are arrogant enough to think they can have the woman of their choosing, if only they try hard enough.”

“But that is ridiculous. A woman may have any number of valid criticisms against a prospective suitor—”

Roman released the statue. “When it comes to a man’s heart, there’s no place for logic, my dear.” He wandered to the billiards table so she wouldn’t see his sudden trepidation. James had every reason to be afraid of Caro. Of her reaction. Of her laundry list of objections to him.

The billiard balls were racked, ready for Tony’s after-dinner game. “Do you play?” he asked Lucy.

Her lips tightened at his attempt to dodge the subject. “I never learned. Trestin prefers to entertain himself out of doors.”

“Ah, yes, our Viscount Who Gardens. Let’s teach you, then. Come to me and I’ll measure you for a cue.”

She approached him uncertainly, considering he only wanted to lean a billiards cue alongside her rail-thin body until he found one approximately the height of her shoulder. She looked aside while he performed this very important measurement with slightly shaking hands.

When they were both good and flustered, he handed her a long, smooth stick and took up his usual cue from the end of the rack. “The objective is a simple one,” he explained. “Send your balls into the pockets using that one there to strike them. I’ll take the first turn.”
 

He set himself up at the foot of the table, leaned across the felt-covered surface and expertly tapped the white ball into a forward spin. A satisfying
crack
split the room. Two solid spheres
plunked into different pockets.

He couldn’t help feeling proud. Too, it was easier to talk to her when he didn’t have to look at her. “If you’re to write about men,” he said, returning to the subject, “you should know how they think.”

He leaned forward again and sent the white ball into a trajectory that intersected the red. The latter rolled and fell snugly into the right corner pocket. “To understand us, you must first understand your own sex. It just so happens I am something of an expert on the subject of women’s fancies.”

“Please go on,” she said in a long-suffering tone. “I wait with bated breath for you to tell me how I think.”

They were ribbing each other, but the truth was no laughing matter. This was his chance to explain before he painted himself in the worst possible light. If he could just make her see it was all a game… That none of it had meant anything… Perhaps…

“Women wish to be worshiped,” he said. “Their affections are best won from inside. If he pleases her, laughs with her, makes her feel beautiful, she will fall in love with a short, balding fellow as easily as a handsome one. Men are less noble. We want the woman everyone else wants, even if she is a shrew. We are conceited enough to think we can have her. Therefore, oftentimes we are not even in love with the woman we desire, but seeking to win her favor in a competition of sorts.”

Lucy withdrew as if disgusted by his admission.

He hadn’t even begun.

He took his time with his response. “Infantile,” he agreed, “yet true all the same. This is why James hesitates. For once, he loves a woman, but love isn’t something he understands. Caro seems so distant, while he is sorting things out like a schoolboy. It’s not entirely her fault, of course; she does not respond to his usual tricks because she is too afraid to be vulnerable to a man who falters. Yet she plays a dangerous game by being coy. It is not in his repertoire to lose. Therefore, he will win, or he will walk away and pretend he never cared.”

Lucy used the tip of her billiards cue to indicate an arrangement of two balls slightly offset from the bumper, near enough to a pocket to be tempting. It was a complex shot meant for a left-handed player. “I believe you can make this angle work.”

Was she not listening to him? Or did she not want to acknowledge the similarities between James and Caro and their own game of persuasion?

He ignored the shot and studied her instead. “James
will
care, even if he must leave. Even if he must move on for the sake of his pride, he will always care.”

Lucy looked away. Mechanically, she reached into a pocket and withdrew a ball. Back and forth, back and forth she rolled it from hand to hand. “If James isn’t sure he understands love, why should Caro trust him? It sounds as though she is right to be wary.”

Roman set his cue against the table. He didn’t move closer, afraid to break the gravity of the moment. “It makes it sweeter if he doesn’t fully understand, don’t you think? When he is with her, he feels complete. Challenged to be better, to think harder. If he savors the ache in his heart and longs for the feelings she stirs in him, does it matter if he doesn’t call it love?”

“It matters,” she said, enunciating each word as if to help him understand, “whether he has experienced poignant anxiety over every woman he’s pursued, those prize conquests he made merely for the pleasure of ‘besting his friends.’”

Roman refused to admit that he had, in fact, known a similar sense of urgency before. His focus was entirely trained on Lucy now; he needed her to see that. “James loves
Caro
. Why must a previous dalliance have any bearing on the present?”

 
She blinked. Her head cocked. “I don’t know,” she admitted after a pause. “I suppose we’re led to believe in true love. Lancelot and Guinevere. Jacob and Rachel. Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. As if it somehow diminishes the sentiment to have felt it before. But that
is
just as ridiculous, isn’t it?”

“Completely,” he agreed, his heart pounding. Because he knew, without a doubt, that what he felt for her was exceptional. Just as he knew what he was about to say would ruin this moment. Because while she could agree to his logic when all was theoretical, convincing her of the depths of his feelings once she knew how very many others had come before her would be more difficult. She’d never loved anyone else. She didn’t know love was a gradient of likes and lusts and wants.

“There is something I must tell you,” he said, spoiling the moment. Ruining any chance of her liking him. But if he didn’t find the courage to tell her, someone else would. Then he wouldn’t even have her friendship to carry him on.

She seemed to still be mulling the likelihood of a one true love. “Yes?”

He hated that he must hurt her to have her. He took a fortifying breath and blurted, “I loved Celeste.”

Her eyes went wide with surprise, then hurt. “Celeste?”

He wished the words back into his mouth.
Blast.
He’d meant to tell her about Letitia. Lead with the worst news so subsequent admissions improved, rather than degraded the situation.

“Wh— What do you mean, Celeste? My brother’s wife?” She turned ashen as the truth hit her. “Does he
know
?”

Roman nodded, wishing he’d said things differently. He should have eased into his explanation about Celeste, rather than coming out with the facts like he’d meant to do with Letitia. “Yes.”

Lucy reached behind her, seeking out a chair. He rushed to help her into a nearby Chippendale, but she pushed away his hands and found the seat herself. For far too long—excruciatingly long—she didn’t speak. One hand fisted in her lap, her white-knuckled grip four beacons of barely-shielded fury.

She bit her lip until he was sure she’d draw blood.

She didn’t look at him. Her rage focused so intently on the carpet, wisps of smoke might rise up from it. “Why are you telling me this? After what you did to her, I don’t understand why Trestin doesn’t despise you. He must have been furious.”

And you?
he wanted to ask.
Do you hate me?

He stood awkwardly before her. There was no good place for his hands—they should be comforting her. No good place for him to look, when beseeching her to understand felt like desperation. In the back of his mind, he remembered her insistence that she might harm him if he angered her enough. But her clear distress made him want to hold her tight and reassure her, not run away. She was obviously suffering, and he was the cause.

“Ashlin has never been happy about it,” Roman admitted. “But he does understand. It helps that she never loved me. It makes me pitiable.”

Lucy raised her head. Her brown eyes were reddened and glistening, further proof she was disappointed in him, rather than murderous. “You will never be that, my lord.”

My lord.
His title was an epithet.

“I should have told you before,” he said lamely.

Her half-laugh was derisive. “When I was a silly country miss, tagging after my brother’s handsome, bumble-headed friend who was in love with a
courtesan
? Or when we were in London, and I asked you—” Her eyes widened. She touched her fingers to her lips. “Celeste was the woman. Great Zeus. I am such a
fool
.”

He’d forgotten. During her Season, she’d asked him if he had a mistress. He’d told her no—the misleading answer barely qualifying as its own brand of truth—and she’d pressed him again, perhaps sensing he hadn’t been entirely honest.

She couldn’t have known to ask if he were anyone’s cicisbeo. Thank God she hadn’t thought to ask him that.

But she’d asked outright whether he had any particular friends amongst the many ladies he surrounded himself with. He’d been in the thick of Celeste’s betrayal at the time. His misery had flashed across his face and Lucy had seen it. He’d basked in her sympathy, unable to lie or even pretend. When she’d asked him if the woman he so obviously loved was aware of his regard he’d told her…he’d told her…