The Husband List (13 page)

Da drew in on his cigar, then exhaled the smoke in a long stream. “It’s a rare thing, seeing you without words.”

What could he say that Da didn’t already know? Jack was a grown man. And he couldn’t be bought.

“Where are you hiding the whiskey?” he asked.

Da laughed. “A fine start on talk.” He pulled open a desk drawer, reached in, and drew out a bottle. “I’ll bear up if there’s no money from Benton, so long as I find another bottle or two of this left behind.”

Jack stood, took the offered bottle, and poured himself another two fingers of Ireland’s finest. He almost had the glass to his mouth when the library door groaned in protest as it swung open.

Jack turned.

“Mister Edward Maxwell,” Wilton announced.

Eddie stepped into the room. He was dressed for a formal dinner and looking distinctly unhappy about it. Jack could sympathize.

“Where the hell have you been, Culhane?” Eddie asked.

“I’m assuming you’re not speaking to me, boyo,” Da said from his seat at the desk.

“Oh, no, sir.” Eddie made a hasty bow and then came closer. “It’s good to see you, Mister Culhane. I was speaking to…” His moustache twitched. “What is that smell?”

“Me,” Jack replied.

“And you’re not dressed for dinner, either. Get cleaned up or we’ll be late,” Eddie said.

It wasn’t that Jack was averse to the idea of cleanliness, but he didn’t need Eddie to tell him what to do. Da was covering that job just fine.

“Late for what?” Jack asked.

“Dinner. In an hour and a half. With my mother and sisters at Villa Blanca.”

“I don’t think so,” Jack said before taking a swallow of whiskey.

“When my mother invites you to dine, you go,” Eddie replied. “Otherwise, she has a way of making the punishment for declining to attend painfully worse than the dinner itself.”

“Ah, but I wasn’t invited.”

Da began riffling through the papers on the desk.

“Not so true,” he said, holding up an opened envelope. “’Tis right here.”

Jack blinked. “You opened my correspondence?”

“I said you’re needin’ a personal secretary. If you had one of those, I wouldn’t be reduced to digging through papers to find where you might be.”

“Your father has a point,” Eddie said. “Where were you?”

“Working,” Jack replied. “And tonight I’m going to rest. I didn’t respond to the invitation. Unless you did that, too, Da,” he added while throwing a wry look his father’s way.

“Of course I didn’t,” Da replied.

“But I did,” Eddie said. “You’re committed.”

Jack sat. “I am unmoved.”

He planned to stay home with whiskey, quiet, and the first food he’d eaten since last night.

“Be a friend, Jack,” Eddie said. “They’ve got Caroline all primped up and are trotting her out to meet Lord Bremerton’s hosts. Don’t make me watch the boring show alone.”

Caroline and boring never happened at the same time. Eddie should have known that. And Jack should have known better than to be tempted by the idea of more time with Caroline. But he was.

Jack swallowed the last of his whiskey and then rose.

“Keep Da company while he takes apart the library,” he said to Eddie. “I’ll be back downstairs soon.”

*   *   *

CAROLINE LOVED her mother. She loved her enough to wear heavy, ice blue satin and what felt like pounds of pearls without a word of complaint. And on this hot and humid evening, that was a prodigious amount of love.

Even the open doors from Villa Blanca’s Green Seaside Salon to the terrace beyond were providing little relief. A few miles offshore, angry clouds had gathered and a gray wash of rain was meeting the sea. Thunder rumbled. Caroline, who had always terrified her Mama with a love of storms, smiled at the thought of this one. Once it broke, the oppressive atmosphere would lighten.

“Perfection,” Mama declared as she gave Caroline one final inspection five minutes before the guests arrived. Helen and Amelia had already passed muster and were whispering to each other on the far side of the room.

“Wonderful. Now may I have a glass of water?” Caroline asked. She felt as though she were cooking under her corset.

“Absolutely not,” Mama replied. “What if you spill and mark the satin? You must be flawless.”

“Alive and able to speak might be advisable, too,” Caroline suggested.

Mama undoubtedly had been about to tell her to watch her words, but Mildred Longhorne entered the room.

Caroline had never seen a dress quite the shade of reddish purple that Mrs. Longhorne had chosen to wear. It reminded her of the grapes that grew wild along Rosemeade’s fence line. She hoped they hadn’t fallen victims to the recent renovations.

“Did you tell Caroline the news?” Mrs. Longhorne asked Mama.

“What news?” Caroline asked.

It had to be something amazing, for Mrs. Longhorne looked ready to spin in a giddy circle.

“Oh, it’s nothing at all,” Mama said in a cheerful voice. “Mrs. Longhorne is just pleased to have lobster salad on the menu, when her chef had said there would be none.”

Mrs. Langhorne laughed. “Ha! Lobster salad!”

Caroline’s mother shot her friend a quelling look. “Have another glass of champagne, Mildred. You seem overexcited.”

Lobster salad was an odd passion, Caroline supposed, but she had heard of more peculiar.

A servant bearing a tray of champagne
coupes
stepped forward to oblige Mrs. Longhorne. Caroline’s mouth watered. She glanced her mother’s way, but Mama shook her head no.

“Do you think champagne does not spot?” her mother asked.

“I think it was created by fairies and will leave only gold dust should it spill,” Caroline replied.

Mama’s friend took a sip of hers. “Indeed! And it is the drink of a celebration such as this, too!”

“Have more, Mildred,” Mama said. She sounded somewhat grim.

Caroline, however, was feeling too sticky to puzzle out why. If she could have no champagne, she demanded air.

“If you’ll excuse me?” she asked Mama and Mrs. Longhorne, but did not wait for an answer.

Caroline walked outside and braced her hands on the stone balustrade that marked the terrace’s edge. She tried to draw in a deep breath, but that was not an option with her corset pulled almost an inch tighter than usual. Instead, she focused on the horizon. Lightning flashed from cloud to cloud, followed by a sharp split of thunder. A welcome breeze ruffled her hair.

She wished she could escape from the dinner party, slip off her shoes, and walk barefoot across Mrs. Longhorne’s impossibly green lawn to greet the storm as it made shore. Of course, Jack would be waiting at the water’s edge. He would carry her to a small rowboat. They would slip offshore to his sloop, which he had naturally named the
Caroline
. He would show her the islands of the Caribbean before they explored South America. Once they’d seen their fill, they’d round Tierra del Fuego and head on to the Pacific. She would chronicle their adventures, and finally the newspapers would print something about her other than the supposed cost of the beadwork on her ball gowns.

Caroline sighed at her fantastical turn of mind. Of course, Jack had no sloop that she knew of and he could hardly lift her in this blasted dress, let alone wade into the surf with her. But he’d be at dinner tonight, and that would do. It had to.

“Caroline,” Mama called a few minutes later. “You must come inside.”

Caroline stepped back into the salon just as the butler announced, “Lord Bremerton and Mr. and Mrs. William and Lurene Carstairs.”

Caroline thought she’d misheard, but three people were indeed entering the room. She looked to her mother. Mama refused to meet her eyes. The twins gave her sad faces of apology, and Mrs. Longhorne appeared pleased enough that one might have thought she’d conjured the Englishman from thin air.

Caroline approached the wine-bearing servant and accepted a glass. Her deep first swallow was decidedly unladylike, and her second just as large.

Lobster salad, indeed.

“Lord Bremerton, it’s a pleasure to welcome you to Villa Blanca,” Mrs. Longhorne was saying.

“Thank you,” the Englishman replied in a deep voice. “It was kind of you to add me to your party at the last minute.”

Caroline felt compelled to admit to herself that he had a pleasant voice. If she were to be fair, she’d also have to admit that he might be a perfectly pleasant acquaintance, even if she had no desire to marry him. It was entirely possible—and to be hoped—that he would not wish to marry her, either. Fortified by champagne and positive thoughts, she hazarded a look his way.

As it turned out, he was not unattractive. Her girlfriends would declare him sigh-worthy, even if she did not. He was tall, almost as tall as Jack, and certainly better dressed than she’d ever seen Jack. The Englishman’s evening clothes fit with a precise elegance, as though he kept a tailor on call around the clock. But Caroline was fonder of Jack’s more relaxed appearance.

Bremerton’s hair was a sandy color and cut in a longer style than American men currently favored. He was pale, almost as though he never even walked in the sun. And his eyes were a startlingly pale shade, too. From her current distance, she couldn’t decide if they were blue or gray.

His gaze settled on her.

Caroline shivered. While a proper heiress was not supposed to admit to having hair on her arms, she could feel hers rising. And not with excitement, either. She had always been a firm believer in instincts, and hers were sounding an alarm. Since running headlong into the downpour that had started would not sit well with her mother, she gave the Englishman a polite smile.

He did not return it. Perhaps that was because he was too occupied taking inventory of her, right down to the pearls sewn onto her dress’s bodice. Whatever his opinion was, he kept it well hidden.

Thunder rumbled, but the storm had not yet broken in here. It would, though. Caroline quickly finished the last of her drink and accepted a replacement as Mama and Mrs. Longhorne said hello to Mr. and Mrs. Carstairs. Then Mama turned her attention to Lord Bremerton.

“Is there anything less formal than Lord Bremerton that we may call you?” she asked.

He stopped sizing up Caroline.

“You may call me sir,” he said to her mother.

A brief silence fell, broken when the Carstairs began laughing. Mama and Mrs. Longhorne joined in, though they didn’t look as though they had any idea what might be funny.

“Our guest has a deliciously dry sense of humor,” Lurene Carstairs said.

Bremerton did not smile.

“My given name is Marcus,” he said. “But I prefer to be addressed as Bremerton when I am among my friends.”

Mama nodded happily, but Caroline had read his distant expression and heard his words for what they were. Other than the Carstairs, the Englishman did not count anyone in this room among his friends. Nor did he look interested in changing that situation, which was just fine. Caroline had made up her mind, too. Bremerton would not be in her life at all.

*   *   *

“DID YOU really have to give the butler your full name?” Eddie asked Jack as they stood just outside Villa Blanca’s dining room. “We’re late as it is.”

“The only reason we’re late is because you got caught up in the money search with my father,” Jack pointed out.

“It was pouring. No point in leaving your house until it let up,” Eddie replied. “And I now have a two hundred dollar finder’s fee from your father. Not bad for an hour’s work.”

The money should have been Wilton’s, who was going to have to put the library back in order now that the men had found the cache Da had suspected was there. Jack would make up for that in Wilton’s next pay. Da, who could be tight-fisted, would not think of it.

“Mr. Edward Maxwell and Mr. John William Anthony Patrick Xavier Culhane,” the butler announced to the other guests, who were readying to take their seats.

“He got it out in one breath,” Jack said to Eddie as they stepped into the room. “Impressive.”

“Better than most,” Eddie replied.

They made their way to the long dining table, an over-fancy work of art that appeared to have been inlaid with alabaster and ebony. The south end of it had been laden with silver, crystal, and china for the small dinner party. Helen and Amelia, who hovered nervously near Bill and Lurene Carstairs, looked as though they wanted to disappear. Mildred Longhorne was as fidgety as usual, and Agnes Maxwell as commanding. But Caroline … she was breathtaking in a pale blue dress. Her dark hair was piled high, and around her throat was a pearl choker. Jack imagined himself removing it and tasting the skin beneath.

Eddie nudged him forward. Jack tried to refocus, but looking away from Caroline was no easy task. She was as electric as the storm that had just passed overhead. At the moment, she was speaking to a man Jack didn’t recognize. The gentleman’s back was to him, or Jack would have warned him off. Caroline appeared ready to hurl a thunderbolt his way.

Eddie and he moved on to greet Eddie’s mother, who gave Jack the cross frown she seemed to save just for him. Mrs. Longhorne was far less annoyed by his presence.

“Come meet our guest of honor,” she said, urging them in Caroline’s direction.

“If you don’t mind my interrupting, sir?” she said to the man with Caroline. “I would like to introduce you to Caroline’s brother, Edward, and the Maxwells’ family friend, Jack Culhane. Gentlemen, this is Lord Bremerton.”

So the almost duke had arrived.

Jack kept his face empty of emotion, which was good work, considering the sudden surge of something close to anger rising in him. He didn’t like the feeling or understand where the hell it had come from. And he refused to let it show, especially in front of an Englishman who looked cool enough to have arrived in Newport packed in ice.

Eddie held out his hand to shake Bremerton’s, but the man inclined his head instead of accepting the handshake. Eddie’s color rose.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Jack said to the Englishman while keeping his hands at his sides.

“And you,” Bremerton replied with an equal amount of insincerity.

Caroline was going to have to stay close to a heat source if married to this man. It was that or freeze. Jack gave her a quick glance. Then again, maybe he didn’t need to be concerned on her behalf. Her color was brighter than Eddie’s. She held out her champagne glass to a passing servant. When he replaced it with a full one, she tossed back half of that in a swallow. Jack smiled. It might turn out to be a long dinner, but it would not be a dull one. He signaled for a drink of his own and waited for the show to begin.