The Heart of a Scoundrel (4 page)

“Is that you?”

He wandered down the stone patio, the tread of his boots noiseless, silent as the dead.

“Oh, do hurry, Honoria.” Edmund drew to a sudden, jarring stop, a black frown on his lips.
Honoria
? Then who was the white-skirted creature he’d been erroneously chasing after? He growled. Bloody hell, he’d followed the blasted wrong chit. Cursing his ill luck he spun on his heel and started back toward the double doors, when the lady called out.

“I’m afraid I’ve snagged my gown on Lord Delenworth’s spear.”

That gave Edmund pause and, despite himself, for the first time in more than a score of years, an honest grin pulled at his lips. He quickly flattened them into a familiar, hard line.

“I’m here,” Miss Phoebe Barrett quietly called, “and this is certainly not as pleasurable as I’d imagined.”

Edmund tamped down any amusement at the lady’s unwitting innuendo. He strode closer. The thick clouds, obscuring the moon, shifted and cast a pale glow of white light upon the terrace to the lone figure of Miss Phoebe Barrett bent over the balustrade with her derriere presented for his viewing pleasure, buttocks far more generous than he’d previously credited.

He stopped beside the lady angling her neck about to catch a glimpse of her friend. Their gazes collided. “Hullo,” he drawled on a silken whisper.

Her eyebrows shot to her hairline as her eyes formed round moons. “Uh-er, hello,” she finished weakly.

He closed the distance between them and layered his hands upon the stone ledge. “Do you require assistance?” Though, in actuality, the lady was a good deal more appealing with her backside presented to him like a generous offering.

“Assistance?” She squiggled and squirmed and an unexpected wave of lust hit him. Then she stilled and he cursed the fates for stealing his fleeting enjoyment of the evening. She sighed. “Yes. I believe I’ve dropped something over the edge.” She bit her lip and scanned the darkened grounds. “My shawl. I suspect the wind may have carried it off when I was looking at the grounds below.” She suspected
wrong
. “Because there really is no other accounting, for it’s gone missing.” Ah, unfortunate for the lady there was one accounting for it. “I would have noticed it gone before this moment,” she carried on.

He winced at her inane ramblings. God, he detested the infernal prattling of the innocent misses. Only… He eyed her with a renewed interest; this woman who could, nay would, lead him to her friend and, ultimately, that friend’s ruination. He’d be served by ingratiating himself to the lady. In so doing, it would lessen his dependence on the lady’s drunken, whore-mongering father.

“Hullo?” she called out, a question in her tone.

Drawing on the hint of remembrance of the charming, youthful man who’d once inspired smiles in a lady, he said in a teasing voice, “I gather you’re unable to free yourself.”

She nodded, the movement awkward at the upended angle of her body. “Indeed,” she said, with an almost eagerness that he’d followed the direction of her thoughts. “Only, I leaned too far, and how was I to know Lord Delenworth should have a cherub with a spear jutting out from the edge of the balustrade?” He rubbed his temples to dull a sudden megrim brought on by the lady’s prattling. “Alas, I’ve caught a lace ruffle of my gown upon the—”

“Will you not shut up?” he bit out. Her innocent ramblings came to an immediate cessation. He closed his eyes and prayed to a God he didn’t believe in for patience.

“Did you tell me to shut up?” Her indignant question slashed into his thoughts.

Despite the outrage in her tone, her question provided the opportunity to rectify his rash misstep. Edmund leaned over the edge and the lady flinched at his nearness. “Indeed not, my lady.” She hesitated, unblinking like an owl. “I’d asked if you needed help getting up.”

“Oh.” Then she smiled widely and in that moment, he was struck by the staggering truth that the lady was a good deal more interesting than the plain, unmemorable creature he’d eyed in the ballroom. She was rather…pleasant. Granted, rather pleasant had never roused any great desire inside him, but it made his intentions to spend time with Miss Honoria Fairfax’s friend, at least…palatable. “Oh, well, of course, that makes a good deal more sense than you being so rude as to tell me to shut up.” If she thought a mere shut up was rude, the lady’s head would spin if she knew even a hint of his debauched behaviors through the years. “Forgive me.” He’d forgive her anything if she ceased her infernal carrying on.

With a tug, he freed the lady’s gown from Delenworth’s spear. Or rather the man’s cherub’s spear.

“Splendid,” the lady exclaimed.

He didn’t care to think about old, portly Delenworth plowing this one over the side of this same balustrade. An unlikely pairing those two would be. He scowled. Why in blazes should he care whether Miss Phoebe Barrett was plowed by anyone? The lady fiddled with her hideously ruffled ivory skirts, drawing his gaze downward and providing him a welcome diversion from his confounded thoughts. He lingered a moment upon that generous bosom. Creamy white. Lush. Begging for a man’s attention.

“I…forgive me, I…thank you,” she said quietly.

He sketched a bow. “Might I have the honor of knowing the lady I’ve rescued from a vicious spearing, my lady?” Edmund’s shaft stirred with delightful images of giving the young lady a vicious spearing. What manner of bloody madness was this, lusting after this one?

“I’m not a lady.”

All the better. He arched a single eyebrow in invitation.

Her cheeks burned red. “I mean, I’m not a ‘my lady’. I’m a miss.” She dropped a curtsy. “Miss Phoebe Barrett.”

A detail he’d already gathered. “Ah,” he said noncommittally.

She cast a glance over her shoulder, out into the darkened London night. When she returned her gaze to his, an unexpected wariness gleamed in her blue eyes. “If you’ll excuse me,” she said, stiffly polite. Did he imagine the previous chit chattering more than a magpie? “It wouldn’t do for us to be discovered together.”

“No, it wouldn’t.” He schooled his expression into that of concerned gentleman. “Forgive me.” He made to leave.

“Wait,” she called out.

They always did. Some inherent darkness she and every other young lady didn’t even know they carried invariably drove back logic and caution and replaced them with recklessness. He turned and looked questioningly back at her. “I don’t know your name,” she blurted.

He sketched a bow. “Edmund Deering, the 5
^th
Marquess of Rutland.” Scandalized shock did not replace the too-trusting openness of her expression. Instead, she continued to evaluate him in that curious manner; an unlikely pairing of innocence and boldness.

Then her expression grew shuttered. Ah, so she’d heard of him. Of course she had. Even though he studiously avoided polite
ton
events if they didn’t serve some grander scheme, ladies old and young alike had heard of him—and knew to avoid him. For the unsophistication of one such as Miss Phoebe Barrett in her ivory skirts, there was also that unexpected guardedness that likely came in her connection to that fat, reprobate Waters. “I should leave.”

Wiser words were never spoken. “Yes,” he concurred.

The lady stepped right. He matched her movements. She stepped left. He followed suit, blocking her exit.

Alarm lined Miss Barrett’s face. A hand fluttered to her breast and he buried a black humor at that ineffectual, defensive gesture. “My lord?” She looked quizzically up at him.

Her instincts were sharp. “Surely, you do not intend to leave without rescuing your shawl?” As though that hand could protect her from his legendary prowess. His was an arrogance based on years of bringing lonely, eager ladies to great heights of pleasure.

His words proved the correct ones. She caught her plump, lower lip between even pearl white teeth and angled back around. Miss Barrett had made her first of many missteps around him—she’d demonstrated a weakness. The shawl, an item belonging to Miss Honoria Fairfax, meant nothing to this woman, and yet she’d risk her reputation, safety, and well-being in his, a stranger’s, presence…but for her friend’s shawl. This hopeless devotion demonstrated her weakness—she cared that much about Miss Fairfax and that would prove useful. He pressed, unrelenting. “I gather it is an important article to you,” he said in soft tones. It was also a fact he intended to put to valuable use. He held out his arm. “Allow me to lend my assistance.”

Except, she narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “I…it wouldn’t be proper,” she said at last.

He’d not given the lady enough credit. With her caution and hesitancy, she’d already demonstrated more reserve than he expected of an innocent. Edmund bowed his head. “Of course,” he agreed. “Forgive me.” He backed away once again. He turned to leave while counting silently to five. He made it no higher than three. “Wait!” she called out, bringing him to a halt. “Perhaps if you remain here while I search below then I might freely conduct my search. That way, if any interlopers,” trysting couples, “should happen by, then you might send them on their way.”

A slow grin formed on his lips that would have likely chilled Miss Barrett’s heart should she have seen it. He schooled his features and turned back around. “It would be my pleasure.”

She gave him a wide, unfettered smile. This was not the guarded, icy, seductive smile worn by the lovers he took to his bed, but rather an expression that spoke to her artlessness. Odd, she should retain even a shred of innocence with her bastard of a father. The viscount’s daughter sprinted for the end of the terrace with a speed anything but ladylike. She raced down the steps and disappeared into the gardens below.

Edmund strolled closer, damning the thick cloud coverage overhead that blotted the moon and obscured the lady from his vision. She moved noisily through the plants. Then the moon’s glow penetrated the passing clouds, illuminating her. “Do you see it, Miss Barrett?” he called down.

She paused and frowned up at him. “Hush,” she scolded as though she dealt with a naughty child and not the most black-hearted scoundrel in London. She held a finger to her lips. Her tone was far gentler, almost apologetic when she again spoke. “Mustn’t be discovered, you know.”

“No,” he called quietly down. Discovery with this one would prove disastrous. It would prevent him from the revenge he intended to exact upon Margaret, the Duchess of Monteith. “If you require my assistance, you need but ask.”

*

The stranger’s softly spoken promise carried down into Lord Delenworth’s gardens. Phoebe lingered, staring up at the dashing stranger far longer than was appropriate and then gave her head a clearing shake. She resumed her search for a splash of ivory fabric amidst the darkened landscape. Though in truth, her efforts, her attention, which should be reserved for the very important task at hand were instead reserved for the gentleman, a man whose name was even more talked about than her own.

Phoebe picked her way down a row of expertly pruned circular boxwoods. Then, a gentleman of his stunning beauty well knew the risk faced of being discovered, unchaperoned with a lady. He had the face and form that hinted at a masculine perfection that made a lady do foolish things…such as forgetting she was alone. With a gentleman. In a garden. Under the pale moonlight.

She cast one glance back up at the marquess with his broad, powerful back presented to her while he stood sentry, then…she wasn’t most ladies. She was one of the Scandalous Row of ladies from illicit families. A flash of white snagged her notice and hope stirred in her chest, drawing her steps in that direction. She paused beside a full rosebush of white blooms, tightly closed from the evening’s chill. Only, he’d displayed no outward reaction to her given name. No shock had flared to life in his eyes at her connection to the lecherous Lord Waters and his excessive drinking and wagering.

She sighed, shaking aside the poignant musings and scanned the grounds for the fabric given her by her devoted, loyal friend. Phoebe knew but pieces of the story behind the shawl but it was a cherished gift and all that remained of her friend’s departed father. And now it was gone because of Phoebe’s carelessness. She stopped and surveyed the grounds for a hint of white in the inky darkness. Gone, all because she’d rushed off in an attempt to avoid loathsome Lord Allswood and—

A shadow fell over her shoulder. It blotted out the moon’s light and she shrieked, but the soft cry died on her lips at the length of ivory cashmere dangling before her eyes. Phoebe whirled around and impulsively plucked the muddied shawl from the gentleman’s fingers. She crushed it to her chest. “How…Where…?” Her throat worked convulsively. “Thank you,” she said, her voice roughened with emotion.

The marquess’ hard lips turned up in a grin, the only softening of the harsh, angular planes of his chiseled cheeks. “Alas, I fear it is more rough for the wear,” he said sympathetically. He shot a hand out and captured the edge of the cashmere, rubbing the soft material between his thumb and forefinger.

“Thank you,” she said once more, studying his powerful hands encased in gloves. Something appealed in those slight distracted movements of his long fingers.