To Charm a Naughty Countess (24 page)

He unbent. “Please sit, Lady Tallant, if you are so inclined. And please explain yourself further.”

A bit brusque, but the countess smiled at him with the same unsinkable good humor her husband possessed, poising herself at the edge of a leather-upholstered chair that looked far too large and masculine for her slim form. Michael sank into a chair a few feet away.

“I have known Caroline for more than eleven years,” she began, then gnawed on her lip.

“I too knew her long ago,” he prompted.

“Yes, exactly.” Lady Tallant took a deep breath. “I hope you will not be offended, Your Grace—”

“Wyverne,” Michael corrected. “I assure you, Lady Tallant, I am never offended by the truth. Please put your mind at ease on that account.”

His companion nodded. “Thank you. Caro and I debuted together, as you know. Though she had no fortune and was not of noble birth, she was irresistibly lovely and charming.”

“Yes,” Michael said drily. “I recall.”

Lady Tallant shot him a sharp look. “Yes,” she echoed. “Well, then, perhaps you recall how admired she was?”

“Yes.”

“How many men courted her?”

“Yes.”

“It’s the same way now. The
ton
is much fuller of followers than leaders, and those followers all wanted to pursue the maiden that had been deemed the most brilliant diamond of the year.”

“Yes.” Every time he agreed, he felt diminished.
She
could
have
anyone, you know.
He propped himself up with elbows on his thighs, his body a rigid right triangle.

Lady Tallant pulled a long breath through her nose; then she let it out in a quick sigh. “They only wanted her until you left London, Wyverne. And then it all went to hell.”

Michael snapped upright so quickly that his teeth clacked together. “I
beg
your pardon.”

“It’s quite true. You can’t be caught embracing a woman in that way, then leave her without a proposal.”

For an instant, he thought she was talking of his recent journey to London, and he almost said
I
did
propose.
But now: they were caught in the past.

How entwined it had become with the present.

“I can. Did.” He knit his brows. “I did, but I… shouldn’t have?” It was hard to recall exactly what had happened, in the long-ago flood of lust and dread. To complicate matters, his long-ill father had died shortly after Michael returned to Lancashire. Once he became Wyverne, he needed no excuse to keep his distance from London.

Lady Tallant grimaced. “I don’t know. Things would be different now, to say the least, if you had not acted as you did.” She offered a thin smile. “While you were in town, there was much gossip that Caroline Ward was going to trap herself the heir to a dukedom. Though a few rumors swirled about you—well, you were still an heir to a dukedom, and you seemed amenable to Caroline.”

“Yes.” Surely the understatement of the century.

“Especially after you two were discovered—”

“Yes, I know.” He didn’t like to think of it: a surrender to passion, a dip into madness. Recently it had happened again on a much greater scale.

“When you put about that your father was ill, everyone understood that you would need to leave for Lancashire. But you did not propose to Caroline, and you never came back.”

“No.” A new refrain at last. “There was nothing for me in London.”

The countess winced. “That became quite clear. It was clear, too, that none of the gossip about your courtship was true. That you had meant nothing serious when you kissed Caroline. Most people thought you had seduced and abandoned her.”

Michael could not suppress a bark of surprise. “Hardly a credit to me.”

“No, but it didn’t matter. As you weren’t there, and as you were titled and a man, there was little outcry against you. Caroline was the one who suffered. Everyone who had admired her charm now remembered that she was a penniless country girl, and they saw her as an upstart. She was all but ruined. She
would
have been if the old Earl of Stratton hadn’t taken a fancy to her.”

“Yes…” The word was a sigh. He hadn’t known any of this.

Oh, he had known they kissed—
God, what kisses
. He had been shocked by the force of them, undone by his own desire for her. Never had he imagined—but then there were so many eyes surrounding them, such laughter at their discovery, and what had been a private revelation turned into a mockery. Caroline had laughed too.

Maybe she had been laughing from glee, thinking he would propose. Or maybe she had simply been young and startled. Maybe she had not turned on him.

But he had turned on himself. When the crowd dispersed, taking Caroline with it, he had slipped into the walled garden behind Lady Applewood’s mansion. And there, quite suddenly, he had gone mad. A fit of shaking, lost mindlessness that robbed him of all his hard-won security.

Soon afterward he had walled himself away in Lancashire. He had known he tightened the reins on his own control, allowing none of the fleshly distractions that had consumed his father and that he himself seemed vulnerable to.

At this distance in time, and in his beloved home, it was difficult to recall the urgency with which he had torn away from London.

It was still more difficult to recall how he had managed to stop kissing Caroline once he had ever started.

He had not known how greatly Caroline was affected. It simply had not occurred to him, inexperienced dolt that he had been at the age of twenty-one, that passionate kisses came with expectations. He had never held any expectations himself that a woman such as Caroline would want him.

Until, one day, she did.

Lady Tallant’s story was a lens, focusing an image of Caroline that had blurred into incomprehension. Now he understood her essential sweetness, sometimes washed over with bitterness; her insistence, earlier today, on maintaining her reputation. Her love of people who made their own way in life. The clergyman’s daughter had bought herself respectability by marrying an old nobleman, and who was Michael to say whether that was too high a price?

“I understand,” he told Lady Tallant.

Instead of softening, she shook her head so vehemently that a loose hairpin fell onto her lap. “No, you can’t possibly. You’ve never suffered as she has.”

“You might be surprised. It’s not precisely pleasant to be called mad.” He tried to make a jest of it, but no one in the world knew how true and deep the pain of it ran.

“I am sure it is not, Your Grace. But as I said, you weren’t in London. You didn’t have to listen to the talk. It has taken great courage for Caro to reclaim her place in society, to lead it with kindness and never to take revenge on those who hurt her.”

Michael nodded, unable to muster a yes.

Lady Tallant rose to her feet, and Michael popped from his own chair. “Thank you, my lady. I am very glad you have reposed your trust in me.”

She smiled at him. “I would not have had I not thought you worthy of it.” She nodded toward the door. “Or of Caro. I’ve never seen anyone come close to touching her heart. She’s my dearest friend, but she has shields even I’ve never seen past. But with you… I hope. That’s all.”

I
hope
. It was better than
despite.

Though he had wounded Caroline so long ago, she had offered to help him anyway. Yet whether she intended to or not, she had certainly taken a perfect revenge on him. She had captured him, mind and body, then sent him packing.

A dish served with all the coldness of eleven years’ wait. Well, some wounds could last a lifetime. He knew this; he had lived this.

Lady Tallant spoke softly. “Shall I call the men back, Wyverne? Or is there something you might wish to discuss with Caro instead?”

Michael heard her only dimly; his mind was clicking all the pieces into place. He would make this right. He would fix this situation. It was long past time.

“Yes,” he said, already pressing at the door handle. “Yes, I must speak with her right away.”

La fée verte
. That was what the French called absinthe, wasn’t it? Caroline had never tasted it herself, but she knew of its ability to contort the world. If the world already seemed contorted, maybe absinthe would set it to rights.

Unfortunately, there was nothing stronger than sherry in her glass, so she must make do. She had already drunk more than she ought, enough that everything seemed muddled.

Or perhaps it was already muddled, and that was why she had drunk too much.

The men had trudged into the drawing room like whipped puppies. Considering Emily hadn’t accompanied them back from the billiard room, Caroline suspected that was exactly what they were. She knew her friend’s skill with a cue.

Michael hadn’t come in with them, though. This probably implied some sort of a Secret Plot on Emily’s side.

Hambleton perched himself on the arm of her chair, teetering on the frail wood support. He positively reeked of Spanish cigars.

“How was billiards?” Caroline managed to ask.

“Fair enough.” He opened and closed his mouth a few times, then added, “Some were fair. I was more than fair.”

“I am sure you were, Hambleton. We both know of your gift for games, do we not?”

Everett had found himself a glass of something spirituous upon entering the drawing room. “I myself was rather abysmal,” he admitted as he approached Caroline. He tugged a chair over to sit at her side. “I seem to be better suited to observation than participation. A hazard of my occupation, probably.”

On this rare vacation from his employer, a capricious baron, Everett was quite frank about being on the hunt for amusement—though with limited coin, his greatest pleasure must lie in mockery. At least he was willing to turn his wit upon himself.

Now, Caroline wished he would turn it to others. The guests were scattered around the drawing room, indolent as cats in the sun. Their complacence stifled her. They were
all
accustomed to doing what they liked.

Just as she’d said to Michael, though her badge of courage had somehow become an insult. It was not as though she wanted anything particularly noble. Right now, she wanted nothing so much as to drown her winding thoughts in the bottom of her glass.

She tipped it up, emptied it again.

“Do allow me,” said Hambleton. He collected her glass and scurried off to refill it, a puppy, fetching and carrying.

She could no longer enjoy the simple pleasure of having a man do a favor for her without wondering…
why?
Michael had led her to question it, and this ruined the spun-sugar fantasy that she and her puppies felt any real regard for each other.

With Michael, she never had to wonder about motive. He gave her frankness and the freedom to be frank with him in return. These gifts were greater than she had realized.

“Here you are, Caro.” Hambleton thrust a glass before her eyes, which took a bleary instant to snap into focus. Her face required another instant to take on the correct expression of flirtatious pleasure.

“Thank you, Hambleton. If I’m not careful, I shall end by becoming quite intoxicated, and that would never do.”

“Oh, wouldn’t it?” He leered, just as she’d known he would, and she smiled dutifully in return.

Surely it should not be so much work being ornamental. Or maybe she just hadn’t the spirit for it tonight.

Fortunately, Emily banged back into the drawing room then, humming a little under her breath. She looked smug, which usually meant she had dispensed advice with a heavy hand.

And behind her… Michael. Marching swiftly as a soldier, his expression set and stubborn.

Caroline suddenly felt apprehensive, and she sat up a little straighter in her tapestry-covered chair. Hambleton stood at her side. They both stared as Michael strode over to loom before Caroline.

“You are mistaken in your assumptions,” he said without preamble.

She could not fathom what he was talking about—or what could have made Emily look so pleased with herself, and Michael so
dis
pleased. “I beg your pardon, Wyverne.” A phrase he knew well.

His nostrils flared. He looked a little wild, like that German composer. Beethoven, was it? The same tousled hair, raked by an agitated hand; the same strong blade of a nose. From his neck down, though, he was utterly English in his ducal uniform of snowy linens, dark coat, and a green brocade waistcoat the precise color of his eyes.

Which were, right now, narrowed at her. He seemed not even to note Hambleton standing at her side or Everett seated only a few feet away. “You, and the rest of society, have been under the misapprehension that I abandoned you eleven years ago. I assure you, I regret that you were nearly ruined.”

The room went quiet at once.

“I beg your pardon,” Caroline said again. Her voice sounded wrong, shaped by numb lips.

“Though my departure was swift, it had nothing to do with you,” he continued, his hands folded behind his back. “In truth, I was eager to leave London for reasons of my own. When my father died shortly thereafter, I was unable to return. I had no notion that my own family affairs would affect your social standing.”

Oh, God.
This
. This, after all these years. This, in the presence of a dozen and a half members of polite society. Thirty-six ears that collected gossip just as honeybees collected pollen. Like honey, the best gossip never lost its flavor.

Her eyes flicked to Emily, who looked as stunned as though feral pigs had just run into the drawing room. So this wasn’t part of Emily’s Secret Plan. A small blessing.

Caroline emitted a bell of a laugh. No matter if it rang a little false. “We need not discuss something that happened so long ago. Surely it’s of little consequence now.”

The taut silence of the room snapped into whispers. Caroline’s skin disobeyed her careful discipline, though she did not know if her face had gone bone white or berry red. She tried desperately to send Michael a message with her eyes.

Stop. Talking. Now.

Naturally, he misinterpreted. “But I can see that you are upset. Caroline, I cannot allow you to hold me in disfavor after all this time.”

“I do not, I promise.” There, that sounded a little better. Some of the numb-slapped feeling was ebbing, and sensation was returning to her lips. “
We
are
all
in your drawing room,
are
we
not
?
Everyone
who
is
here
must count you as a friend.”

He looked at her a little oddly, not picking up on the reminder that others were scattered all around them.

He pressed a thumb against his temples, shutting his eyes. She tried again. “Wyverne, you look a trifle ill. Shall we check the stillroom for something to help your head?”

Not her most subtle segue, but when he opened his eyes again, something seemed to have cleared. “Very well,” he accepted with a curt nod.

Caroline excused herself, her head high as she crossed the wide drawing room. The old memories clawed at her exposed back as she trod the patterned carpet, aware of Michael’s presence behind her, aware of the eyes on her and the whispers that roiled.

Just as they had eleven years ago. Damn the man. She had tried to warn him. No doubt Emily had tried too. But there was never any warning Michael, nor any warning
for
him. He was as purposeful and blunt as a club.

And a club could easily destroy the subtler weapons Caroline had honed. Charm and graciousness were too fine and fragile to stand up to such a beating.

As soon as they entered the corridor outside the drawing room, she reached past him to press the door shut, then rounded on him. “You dratted duke,” she hissed. “You have humiliated me in front of others.”

His head jerked. “I—”

“If you say ‘I beg your pardon,’ I will not be responsible for my actions.”

“Already I do not comprehend your actions. You appear to be angry when I meant only to offer you an apology.”

She yanked at his sleeve, pulling him further away from the drawing room door, then hissed, “An apology? Is that what it was? I couldn’t tell, as I never heard the words ‘I’m sorry’ come out of your mouth. Instead, there was a lot of tosh about you abandoning me and my complete insignificance to you, which, considering the ancient vintage of those events, surely did not need to be brought up with such urgency in front of
all
your
guests.
”

Her voice was rising again, and she shoved open the nearest door and pressed Michael’s surprised body through the doorway. She followed him and kicked the door closed behind her.

One of the inevitable Carcel lamps sat on the mantel, revealing the dim shapes of the room: chaise longue, flat-cushioned chair, a wallpaper that loomed dark in the low light. They were in the dizzy-patterned Chinese room. It seemed an age, rather than the span of a single day, since Caroline had lounged in here with Emily, talking of Michael as though she had all the time in the world to make something of him, or of herself.

Instead, he had unmade her in a few swift instants—just as he had so long ago, with a kiss that changed her life.

“You don’t even know what you’ve done.” She stumbled over to the chaise and sank onto it, heavy and dull.

“Maybe it wasn’t the most articulate apology, but an apology is what I intended.”

Michael threaded his way through the clutter of furniture with aggravating certainty and seated himself on the fragile chair Caroline had occupied that morning. It creaked a protest as he settled onto it, leaning toward her. “Your friend Lady Tallant let me know that you had suffered greatly during your debut season, eventually undergoing what was practically a forced marriage. As the author, if unknowingly, of your distress, I sought to make amends.”

Caroline sank into a recline and covered her face with her hands. “This is too ridiculous,” she said through her fingers, then allowed her hands to drop. “I’m sure you meant well, and Emily did too. But I am also sure that Emily did not intend for you to profess your desire to undo an ancient humiliation.”

“I—”

“Don’t. Say. It.”

He let out a surprised cough. “I was about to say, ‘I cannot be sure of her intention, because she herself was unsure of your feelings.’ That is all.”

“I don’t think either you or Emily wants to know my feelings right now.” She pushed herself up to a seated position. “I don’t even know if I can express them in words, since I’ve never collected the vocabulary of profanity that most gentlemen enjoy.” She sighed into the silence. “But you wouldn’t know what to do with feelings anyway, would you? So let me respond to your ridiculous theories.”

“I—”

“I will kill you if you say it. I swear it.”

Michael’s brows knit. “You are in some distress.”

“Very astute, Your Grace.”

She could see his body snap straight, as though her sarcasm had sliced him. His face moved out of shadow and into the dim lamplight.

He looked wounded. Good. She was tired of being kind and gracious, especially with him. “You want the truth, Michael? You are sure you cannot be offended by it?”

“Offended? No. Not by the truth. It is an essential foundation for any relationship.”

“Very well. Here is the truth: you have absolutely nothing to do with my social standing.”

He opened his mouth, then pressed his lips together. Caroline was sure another
I
beg
your
pardon
had tried to slip out. “How is that possible?” he said instead.

“In the same way it is possible for a clergyman’s daughter to become a countess. Michael, that was my doing, not yours.”

“You cannot have wished to marry the late earl. Your friend told me it was a choice you made only to avoid social ruin.”

She bit her lip, hard, to stay a quick reply. When she answered, her voice was as measured as any lover of science could wish. “That was my choice too, though. I could certainly have retreated from society if I wished for the quiet country existence my parents led during their lives. But I did not wish that. I am also the niece of a baronet, and I grew up in the pocket of his household. I wanted a life in the highest circles of society, and I chose a marriage that would give it to me.”

She let this sink in, then added, “They were my choices, Michael. It was my choice to kiss you, and it was my choice to marry the late earl. I do not apologize for these choices, and there is certainly no need for you to.”

“But the way that society cut you after I left—I did not know that until this evening. I would have made the situation right.”

“By doing what? Rushing back to London and offering me marriage?” She batted the ridiculous suggestion away with a flick of her hand. “Nonsense. Here is all that happened when we were young: we talked; we kissed; you left. And what happened a few weeks ago? We talked, we… kissed… and again, you left.”

This blunt recital echoed Michael’s style: logical, clipped, emotionless. Caroline could not bear to describe the spell cast over her nineteen-year-old self by twilight conversation on a terrace, by the deep gaze of young Michael Layward, who seemed to look into her soul. She had felt he
knew
her, and his kiss was exhilarating, like being swept into a fairy story.

But such stories always ended. Caroline made no mention of the desolation she had felt when he left London without a word to her. So much had he preoccupied her every thought that she did not at once realize that new invitations were addressed only to her cousin, that whispers followed her down the street. Oh, she knew the power and pain of whispers; maybe that was why she was now so determined to abolish them when she could. Even for Michael.

Especially for Michael.

In those quiet long-ago days when she realized Michael was gone, so was the respect in which society had once held her. But what would be the purpose of bringing that up now? She had put those events behind her. She had remade herself, gilded and bright, and she wanted none of this pitying shadow from him.