The Heart of a Scoundrel (15 page)

“A book,” Gillian’s fallen tone conveyed her tangible disappointment. Phoebe held it up so they might read the title etched in gold lettering. The young woman retrieved a small plate and helped herself to a raisin scone. “There are no worries as to
that
selection,” she said for Honoria’s benefit. “After all, there is nothing at all amorous or inappropriate in,” she wrinkled her nose, “Captain Cook’s
Resolution
.”

“There is everything inappropriate in it, for—”

“There is everything inappropriate in what?”

The ladies shrieked at the sudden, unexpected and, in this moment, very unwelcome appearance of Phoebe’s brother, Andrew. Gillian’s plate tumbled to the floor and landed on the Aubusson carpet, remarkably unbroken. Phoebe sighed as her friends came to their feet and greeted Andrew. She’d quite missed him when he’d been at university, but she did not miss his bothersome tendency of making havoc for her.

He strode over, arms folded. “Well, then?” he quizzed, as the ladies reclaimed their seats.

“It is…” Honoria and Phoebe glared their oft loose-lipped friend into silence. “Er…nothing. It is nothing.”

Andrew narrowed his eyes and plopped into the empty King Louis XIV chair opposite Phoebe. And her book. And her disapproving friends. She tamped down a groan. This had all the makings of a headache. He drummed his fingertips along the arms of his chair and then suddenly stopped and leaned forward. Settling his palms upon his hideously garish, canary yellow satin breeches, he whispered, “Is this about the gentleman Justina claims you’ve been making eyes at?”

At Gillian’s giggling, Phoebe frowned. “I am not making eyes at him.”
Drat
.

Andrew leaned back in his seat triumphant with a gloating expression stamped on his face. Then showing the hint of boy he still was, or at least was to her, he reached over and swiped a plate and a cherry tart. He popped the sugared treat in his mouth in one bite. “Who is he?” he said after he’d swallowed.

“You’ve sugar on your face,” she admonished.

He yanked out a kerchief and dabbed at his lips, ignoring her friends’ obvious enjoyment, clearly expecting her brother would be indignant and then what? Challenge Edmund to a duel when he discovered that the notorious Marquess of Rutland intended to court his sister. “Well?”

She sighed. “Lord Rutland.”

The yellow embroidered fabric slipped from his fingers and sailed forgotten to the floor. Her brother narrowed his eyes. “The Marquess of Rutland?”

“The same,” Honoria said with a pleased nod.

Andrew furrowed his brow. “Not really the marrying type.”

“Precisely, my—
our
concern,” Honoria amended at Gillian’s pointed frown.

Gillian spoke on a loud whisper. “They say he doesn’t leave his clubs.”

Phoebe curled her fingers about the gift, knowing implicitly the gentleman in question did, in fact, leave his clubs. Edmund visited museums and curiosity shops. And now her, he’d visited her. Gentleman did not visit ladies unless they desired more. A thrill ran through her. Detesting Andrew and her friends’ seemingly know-all about Edmund, when they, in fact, knew nothing, she said, “I assure you he leaves his clubs.”

Her brother shook his head. “No, Gillian’s correct on this score. The man doesn’t,” he insisted. He puffed out his narrow chest, looking like a boy playing at powerful peer. “Even been to some of those clubs, myself.”

A startled gasp escaped her lips and she buried it in her fingers. “Andrew!” she chided, glaring her giggling friends into silence.

“What?” He shifted in his seat. “I have, you know.” Her brother tugged at the lapels of his jacket. “Been to those clubs.” His sullen tone was more suited to a boy caught raiding Cook’s kitchens than a young man having his roguish actions called into question.

Concern blotted out her earlier annoyance. With their father’s reputation and the shame visited upon them as such, she expected he’d hold to a higher moral standard.

“And,” Andrew continued on a hushed whisper, “I see him there quite frequently. Terrifying chap.” A mottled flush stained his cheeks. “Not that I’m afraid of the man, I’m not,” he said, his tone wholly lacking of conviction.

“You should be,” Honoria warned. “You both should be.”

Phoebe scoffed at more of her friend’s cryptic, unsubstantiated warnings.

“I’m not afraid of any gentleman.” Andrew’s too-excited voice bounced off the walls. “Including Rutland.” The color staining his cheeks deepened and he came awkwardly to his feet. “If you’ll excuse me, ladies, I’ve business to see to.”

Phoebe’s lips twitched with mirth as she strained to hide her amusement. “Of course,” she said. Her placating tone only elicited a scowl. At eighteen, nearly nineteen, there was not much business he had to see to, and she suspected as he sketched a bow and all but bolted from the room, his departure had more to do with embarrassment than anything else. With his absence, however she now found herself alone with her disapproving friends. She braced for their barrage of words about Edmund and his unsuitability.

Surprisingly, it was Gillian who returned them to the matter of concern. “He wants to court you?”

“He does.” She reached for the small, leather volume and she flipped open the cover.

“Why?” Honoria asked and the rudeness of such a question brought Phoebe’s head up. “Not because you’re not lovely, because you are, and clever and kind, but Rutland does not have use for any of that.” She wrinkled her nose. “Well, but for the exception of the lovely part.”

Phoebe bristled. How dare Honoria presume to know anything about Edmund? “I’ve come to find that we have shared interests.” And as two people condemned by Society, shared experiences. “He enjoys more than the world sees.” Just as she, whom polite Society expected should have no interests beyond the fabric of her gown or the pursuits deemed ladylike that had never held any appeal for her. “And there is no harm in allowing him to court me and seeing if there could be more.” Phoebe dropped her gaze to the book and her heart started at the two words inked upon that ivory velum page.

Dream
, Phoebe…

She snapped the book closed, lest her friends see this piece she’d not share. “I do not care to debate Ed—Lord Rutland’s merits with you.” Not anymore. “I appreciate your concerns and will be cautious with my heart, but neither will I judge a man on rumor alone.” Considering the matter settled, she sat back in her seat while her friends dutifully turned the conversation to matters that were not Edmund and, therefore, far safer.

*

The garish dandy in his silly satin breeches had his gaze fixed on Edmund. Seated as he was, as he always was, with his back pressed against the wall, allowing him a vantage of the entire scandalous hell, he narrowed his eyes on the young man who’d been staring for the better part of an hour. The lad blanched and yanked his gaze away.

Promptly dismissing the pup, Edmund took a swallow of his brandy and instead focused his attentions on the lean, lithe young lady with thick auburn tresses who’d occupied the better part of his thoughts since he’d taken his leave of her that morning—Phoebe.

He stared into the contents of his glass seeing her. The deep shade put him in mind of her silken curls, those curls he still longed to see fanned out upon his bed. With a silent curse at those fanciful musings, musings that he, the Marquess of Rutland, certainly did not have, Edmund took another drink. His lips pulled in an involuntary grimace that had nothing to do with the burn of liquor and everything to do with those damned romantic, nonsensical thoughts about a lady and her satiny soft skin and the glimmer in her clear blue eyes… He tossed back the remaining contents of his drink.

Edmund passed the empty glass back and forth between his hands, fixing on the lingering droplets that clung to the edge of his tumbler. In this moment he could not sort out who he hated more—himself or Phoebe—for slipping past his defenses and burrowing a place inside him that he’d not known existed; a place of hope, where revenge didn’t dwell.

You smile and then it is as though you remind yourself that you do not want to smile and this muscle twitches…

A chill ran through him at how eerily accurate those words had been and, more terrifying, for the truth of them. After having been forced to witness his mother tupping her husband’s brother, he’d seen the inherent ugliness in life. The lesson, however, had proven a useful one. If his parents, the people who’d given him life, were capable of such vile depravity then certainly such ugliness dwelled within him, too. Time had proven that as fact. Edmund swiped the bottle of brandy from the table and splashed several fingerfuls into the glass. He wanted to hate Phoebe. Nay, he didn’t want to feel anything where she was concerned. Revenge could not be fully exacted when a man felt any hint of emotion. But with four damned meetings, she’d become, God help him—a young woman. A young woman beyond her silly, white skirts and attendance at polite social functions. Now, she was a woman who dreamed of travel and her damned Vikings and the Captain Cooks of the world. What was more, when she looked at him, she didn’t see the monster Society took him for, the beast he truly was. He’d infiltrated her world, much the way her marauding Vikings had, and fed her words of falsities, all to exact revenge upon her friend. And through this pretend courtship and the orchestrated meetings, some great shift had occurred, and it threatened to plunge him into the precipice of madness.

For, God help him, that foolish, careless youth who’d opened his heart to a woman and had it flayed open for all to see, still lived. Despite Edmund’s confidence that he’d long ago buried the inherent weakness to feel…
anything
, Phoebe’s smile and boldness and talks of love and hope proved that he still felt. His mind skirted away from just precisely what he felt.

He swirled the contents of his glass. The irony was not lost on him. He, who used every man, woman, or servant who could advance his plans for wealth or retribution through the years, would not use Phoebe. In the end, she’d defeated him. How could he truly move forward with his plans for the prickly Miss Honoria Fairfax when another brown-haired, whimsical miss would forever occupy his thoughts? In marrying Margaret’s niece, nay, in trapping her, by nature of her relationship with Phoebe, he’d consign himself to a world where he would never be free of Miss Phoebe Barrett. Just like the scar he carried on his leg, she would remain a mark reminding him of his weakness.

Filled with a seething fury with himself, he picked his head up. His gaze collided with the blond dandy across the club. Even with the distance between them, he detected the up and down movement of the young man’s throat. He glared at the youth. However, instead of looking away as he’d done the better part of the afternoon, the lad angled his chin up and with a shocking boldness, held Edmund’s stare. Fear, trepidation, and determination warred within the young man’s eyes as he shoved himself up from his seat and made his way through Forbidden Pleasures.

Edmund narrowed his gaze even further as it became apparent with the lad’s long-legged gait that he sought him out. The young man stopped before his table. “H-hullo.”

In a sign of deliberate disrespect, Edmund reclined in his chair and remained seated.

“M-may I?”

“May you what?” he asked on a steely whisper. But for the ladies trapped in their empty, miserable marriages who desired the wickedness found in his arms, people did not seek him out—that was unless they required something of him.

“S-sit?”

Ah, yes. It began to make sense. The lad required a favor. Favors oft proved lucrative ventures that increased his coffers and power.

Then in another surprising move, without permission granted, the young man tugged out the seat and settled himself into the chair, effectively obstructing Edmund’s unrestricted view of the club.

He stared at the youth dispassionately.

“Y-you probably know who I am.”

Actually, he hadn’t a bloody inkling as to who this fragrance-doused dandy was. He remained silent, while the lad fidgeted back in forth, scrutinizing him through narrowed eyes. The bold yet fearful stranger couldn’t be more than eighteen or nineteen years of age. With thick wax coating his blond hair, he was not someone Edmund recognized, nor cared to know. And yet… He continued to study him. There was something vaguely familiar in those cautious, yet determined, blue eyes.

At the stretch of awkward silence, the dandy cleared his throat. “Er…I expect you should know me and if you don’t then it was time to introduce myself for proprietary’s sake.”

Proprietary’s sake? Edmund gave even less of a jot about propriety as he did for the gossip hurled about him through Society’s parlors and receiving rooms.

“You don’t say much, do you?” he blurted. “Yet, the ladies do seem to favor you.” That piece was spoken more to himself, as though he puzzled through an incongruity of life.

Edmund’s lips tugged at the consternation in the boy’s tone.
You smile, and then it is as though you remind yourself that you do not want to smile and this muscle twitches…
He promptly pressed his lips into a hard, comfortable, and safe line. His patience thoroughly exhausted, he snapped, “What do you want?”