To Love a Wicked Lord (5 page)

She was as flattered as confused, and sat listening to him, entranced.

“It makes me wonder,” he went on. “Do you think your grandfather wants you to attach yourself to me if we discover that Noel met with bad fortune or cold feet?”

She blinked and then glared at him. “No!” she spat. “No and no! Grandfather is clear in all his dealings. There's no secret purpose on his part, or mine.”

“You don't find me attractive?” he asked in piteous tones, as though she hadn't spoken.

She was momentarily silenced. He was jesting, and then she was certain he was not. She lifted her head. “You are, as you must know, my lord, a very attractive fellow. But I prefer gentlemen with a bit more
man
and a bit less
gentle
in their natures. In short,” she said defiantly, “I don't know whether you're pretending to be a popinjay or really are one, but whichever you are, it matters little to me. I have no designs on you, my lord. Let it go at that. Or,” she asked shrewdly, leaning forward, “are you trying to alienate me so that I leave in a huff and find someone else to take me to Noel?”

He smiled. “Oh do, please. I've never seen anyone leave in a huff, though I've heard about it. I've seen people leave in a rage, which moves so
fast it's hard to describe. But if you've a huff standing by, I'd love to see it.”

Her lips turned up in spite of herself.

“Of course,” he added, “I find your grandmamma very desirable as well; it must run in the family.”

Pippa shot a glance to her grandmother. The lady's eyes were still closed, her expression hadn't changed, but her breathing wasn't yet the full-throated snoring Pippa knew she eased into when she fell fast asleep.

“But I'd never risk your grandfather's anger,” he went on. “And I'm sure he would never dangle her in front of me as a lure.”

“Few men would do that to you where it concerns a female,” she said angrily.

His shapely mouth grew a slow, curled, and very wicked grin. It changed the appearance of his face, making him look as eerily provocative as a depiction of the devil come to tempt mankind, and womankind.

“Are you sure of that?” he asked her. “Interesting. You find cleanliness and interest in fashion and a certain niceness in my speech as meaning I don't desire women? Are only bluff fellows in bad clothes your idea of virility? That will certainly make it easier to find your Noel. We can sniff him
out. He must be a stranger to soap; I daresay even a bit heady? Did he clap you on the shoulder to congratulate you whenever you looked as lovely as you do tonight? Did he growl, ‘Give us a kiss, lass,' and give you a hearty buss on the lips before clapping you on your shapely rump? That's the way of those hearty fellows.”

He lowered his voice until she had to strain to hear him. “Or did your Noel spread his hands and run them slowly along the silkiness of your gown until he touched your silkier skin, murmuring his delight in the warmth and smoothness of you? And was his kiss only a slight suggestion of a touch upon your lips at first, and then, when you relaxed, was it a slower, sweeter delving into the increasing sweetness he doubtless found in your mouth?”

“Stop! You shouldn't say such things to me!” Pippa said, knowing her protest sounded girlish and insipid even as she breathed it. He'd only praised her with words, but they bordered on lovemaking. He might only be trying to refute the snub she'd made to his masculinity, but she was scandalized, and to her dismay, aroused. His voice beguiled her. His words stroked her, soothed her, tempted her. She didn't know whether to be flattered or outraged. “It's disturbing and makes me
feel uncomfortable,” she added, sounding prissy even to her own ears.

“Then I won't do it again,” he said unapologetically.

“Why did you?” she persisted.

“To see how you'd react. Or maybe I meant it. But if you don't care for it, I won't continue. Some ladies consider such flattery enjoyable and expect it, like a game of cards after dinner. Some don't. But you believe I'm uninterested in females?” he asked more briskly. “Interesting. Would you care to wager on it?”

“No,” she said in a shaken voice, because the mere thought of testing his masculinity was dismaying. And he knew it.

The only thing she might wager on was that he probably smelled even better than she did, and spent more on his wardrobe. The idea of actually kissing him made her anxious. Was he testing her, teasing her, or trying to frighten her back home?

No matter, she was only going in one direction—with him, until she found out what had happened to Noel. And so she said as she rose from her chair. “And all the provocative talking in the world isn't going to deter me,” she added.

He shrugged. “I thought not. But are you sure that was why I said such things?”

“You certainly weren't going to propose marriage to me, and I can't do anything else with you,” she said bluntly. “Of course you were trying to get me to go home.”

“You don't think I find you desirable?”

“It wouldn't matter. You know the rules. That's not how you speak to a well-born unmarried lady.”

He smiled. “Certainly not. You're right. I was trying to discourage you. You tell me that nothing will stop you?”

“Nothing,” she said clearly, “will stop me.”

“Then I apologize,” he said seriously. “Sincerely. It was abominable of me. It won't happen again.” His smile was crooked. “The least you could do would be to look disappointed.”

She laughed because she was relieved. But she discovered herself disappointed too.

“Let's have peace,” he said. “Forgive me even though my behavior was calculated to be unforgivable. Shall we stop fencing?”

“I'd like to,” she said honestly.

“Done. Where are you going?” he asked as she stood.

“Upstairs, to bed,” she said.

“Aren't you going to wait here by the fireside with me until your grandmother awakens?”

She dared not, in spite of his reassurances not to continue his seductive behavior. The night, the hour, their proximity was too much for her now. “My grandmother,” she said with more certainty than she felt, “isn't sleeping. She said she was only resting her eyes, and so she is. It's time for us to go upstairs, Grandmamma,” she added more loudly.

Her grandmother opened her eyes. She smiled. “Such a lovely little doze I had. Have I missed anything?”

Montrose rose and came to her side. He smiled down at her. “Not a thing, my dear lady, as you know. You're sly as a tabby, and just as tempting to pet. But your husband would have my hand off at the wrist if I tendered it to you for anything more than to help you to your rightful night's rest.”

Lady Carstairs gave him her hand and began to rise. “Wicked fellow,” she tittered.

He bowed. “I can but try, my dear lady.”

Pippa scowled.

“Gentlemen used to speak as you do, when I was young,” Lady Carstairs said as she leaned on Montrose's proffered arm. “All innuendo and suggestive. Damned shame they don't talk that way anymore. It kept a lady on her toes. Or her back,” she added.

“Grandmother!” Pippa gasped.

“Such a bland generation we have bred,” the lady told Montrose. “We had more fun then. A gentleman's attentions made a woman feel wanted even if she didn't care to indulge.”

“I'll wager Grandfather didn't speak that way,” Pippa said wrathfully.

Her grandmother shook a finger at her again. “Don't wager on what you don't know, missy,” she said. “You weren't so anxious to take up a gamble with Montrose here a minute ago, were you? So don't start now.”

Her grandmother and Lord Montrose shared a conspiratorial smile.

“You were not sleeping,” Pippa said crossly as she trudged up the stair behind them.

“Don't wager on that either,” her grandmother cackled.

It was time, Pippa thought as she followed them, to write a letter to her grandfather. The message would have to be deftly phrased and imply more than it said, but she felt her grandmother should have been outraged at how Lord Montrose talked to her, if she'd heard it. And Pippa was sure she had.

Pippa brooded. She was off on a hunt with her beloved grandmother, who was longing for a past
generation, and who might be failing in her wits, accompanied by a treacherous gentleman who had too many wits and likely no morals.

But Pippa discovered that the thought didn't sink her, and certainly wouldn't stop her. In fact, she decided it was both too late in the night and too early in the day to compose such a letter. She could do it tomorrow night…or the next one.

I
haven't offended anyone, have I?” Lady Carstairs asked.

The two gentlemen at the card table with her shook their heads in denial.

“As if you could,” Maxwell said smoothly.

“I assure you, you have not,” his friend Sir Whitney said.

Pippa stared down at the cards in her hand. She hadn't just been offended by her grandmother's offhand remark; she'd been shocked and embarrassed. The topics, words, and phrases coming from her grandmamma's mouth these days would have earned her a smack or a soapy mouth if she'd said them when she'd been a child, and lord knew her grandparents had been liberal to the point of spoiling her badly. Now Pippa's cheeks felt hot and her mouth was dry. Grandmother had just spoken of sexual matters as though she'd been born in a barn
yard. The trouble was that she also spoke about bodily functions the same way these strange days.

But then, they'd all been drinking wine since dinner had ended. Maybe her grandmother was flown, drunk as an owl, soused and trying too hard to sit upright to mind her tongue.

No, Pippa admitted, Grandmamma seemed happier than usual, and that was usually the case these days. And she was coherent. Too coherent. Nor did she slur her words or list to one side. She was sober, and utterly abandoned.

“Good. Thank you, gentlemen,” Lady Carstairs said happily. “There's not enough plain speaking these days. You two gents aren't poseurs or mealy-mouthed Puritans. Why, look. My granddaughter gets red as a rose whenever I utter a word these days. Mind, it's a charming effect, but she doesn't need beautification, does she?”

Both gentlemen agreed Pippa did not need any cosmetics. They did so without looking at her, paying attention to their cards instead. This didn't surprise Pippa. At dinner, they paid attention to their plates, and Grandmamma. After dinner, they'd blown a cloud together outside, put out their cigars, and then came in to play cards with Lady Carstairs. Though they played cards with her too, Pippa began to think she had somehow become
invisible. Her grandmother was the only one that noticed her. At least, tonight she did.

She and her grandmother had traveled together for days now. There was no longer any conversation between them. Grandmother caught up on her sleep as they drove on. When she did speak to her granddaughter, Pippa was pleased that her conversations weren't lurid when they were alone together. She'd have been better pleased if they at least had been different. But the only things she heard were the same old stories and conjectures about her vanished fiancé. Still, they'd been locked up together in a swaying coach so long Pippa realized that she'd have been sick and tired of the angel Gabriel's company by now, had he been traveling with her.

She might even have welcomed some warm talk. But as though proving she wasn't growing addled, Lady Carstairs never said an embarrassing word—until she was with the gentlemen. And they never rode in the coach.

They rode on horses beside the coach and seemed to be having lively conversations. They chatted and laughed together as they rode down the long road to the sea, and Brighton. Whenever the coach stopped to change horses, the gentlemen were merry with each other as they hurriedly ate so
they could get back outside again. Pippa resented their good humor, when she herself was bored all the day long.

Sir Whitney was a charming man. He had manners and presence, and never made an unseemly comment to her, although like his friend, he too flattered her grandmother to bits once he saw how starved she was for praise. Or, at least, Pippa thought that must be the reason the two men spent so much time with her.

For the first time in her life, Pippa began to worry about her appearance, or at least how she appeared to others. Noel had swept in like a clean cool wind and swept her up in his attentiveness and enthusiasm for her. Pippa now realized she must have been as starved for company and praise as her grandmother so obviously was. Noel had loved her looks and her wit, he'd said. She'd felt prettier and wittier when she was with him.

But perhaps she was boring to other men? Maybe her fair good looks were out of fashion? She'd heard that brunettes were all the rage in London. Or perhaps, all her years with her grandparents had changed her. She might seem dull-witted, provincial, and too blue-nosed for the company of any lively young gentleman. That might be the reason Noel
sheared off so suddenly and never returned to her.

“Bad hand, eh?” her grandmother cackled. “Look at her face, my lords, and know why she never can beat me at cards.”

“Maybe she's playing a deeper game,” Montrose said. “She might have learned to keep her emotions from her opponents.”

“Ha,” Lady Carstairs said. “Not her. She's clear as glass to me. She owes me a thousand pins by now. I let her wager them because she ended up owing me so many pence she'd never have cleared up her debt.”

“I never could pay my debt to you, Grandmamma,” Pippa said quietly.

“Ha,” her grandmother said again. “As if you owed anything. Brightened our lives is what she did, gents, when she came to us. My husband lost his dear son in the same accident in which she lost her father and mother. But no one could have asked for a better legacy than the child they left to us. She was a charming surprise. She didn't cost much to keep. Ate like a bird, and sang like one too; a pretty pet for us to cosset in our old age.”

Pippa felt her face growing hot again. She was far past the age of a pretty pet. Maybe that was the root of her problem. She'd been so spoiled she'd for
gotten what grown-up men wanted in a woman.

“You're a lucky lady,” Sir Whitney told her grandmother.

“But wouldn't her Noel have carried her off out from under your very noses?” Montrose asked.

“Not he,” Lady Carstairs said contentedly. “He said that The Old Place suited him right down to the ground and that he would settle down there with our Phillipa so that we could have the halls ringing with children's laughter again.”

“He did?” Pippa asked, sitting up straight.

“Of course,” her grandmother said placidly. “Why else do you think we gave permission? He wasn't a rich gent, but a smart and good-hearted one. And we didn't want to lose our girl forever. At our age,
forever
is right around the corner.”

“But he said we'd travel,” Pippa protested. “And he spoke of a house by the river.”

“Not to us, he didn't,” Lady Carstairs said. She put down her cards and splayed them out. “Ha! Beat you again, my lords, and my little love. I haven't lost my touch. Want another game?”

“It's getting late,” Pippa said, although she was wide-awake now. Why hadn't she known that Noel proposed living with her grandparents forever? Or had he? That was another question to include in her letter to her grandfather.

Lady Carstairs laughed. “Late? London is just getting the fun started at this hour, and from what I hear, Brighton is too. The balls and soirees, musicales and gambling all begin when the moon is high over the rooftops. You're too used to the Old Place, Pippa, my love, and you were too right about Bath. That was for invalids and old crones. Now we'll be living in a different world, like London itself in gaiety, and you may as well get used to it before you even think of going to London.”

“Have you never been to London, Miss Phillipa?” Sir Whitney asked in surprise.

“Of course I have,” Pippa said. “But only briefly. Grandmother had a heavy chest contagion the Season I was supposed to spend there, and the next year it was something else, and then I suppose,” she said, her voice becoming lower, “it became foolish to think of myself wearing white gowns and playing a dewy young girl.”

“Then your grandmother is right,” he said. “Brighton's a good place to learn the evil ways of London, if on a smaller scale, should you ever want to go there again.”

“Stop, Whit, you'll frighten her,” Lord Montrose said. “And remember, she's only going in order to find her lost fiancé, not to learn to dance and drink and laugh the night away.”

“But I am,” Lady Carstairs protested. She was pink-faced from laughing. Pippa thought she looked years younger tonight in the ruddy glow of the firelight. The cheerful illumination erased lines from her face, smoothed out hollows and brightened her entire demeanor. She looked like a plump little robin.

“She can watch and learn,” Lady Carstairs said. “As for me, I intend to make up for all the lost years. Not that I minded losing them, but I think I was gone from the gaiety of Society for so long I quite forgot it. You gentlemen bring it back to me. Not only the parties but also the people we knew, and the salons. My husband and I had quite a fashionable salon of our own in our day. Our parlor was stuffed with lords and ladies, and those females who wanted to be ladies,” she added with a wink.

“We entertained politicians and artists,” she went on, “as well as those in Society—the eccentrics and notorious as well as the famous. We even had visitors from the stage. Well-known ones, of course. We hosted royalty from every land, and diplomats, generals, and admirals, painters and even poets. Poets? Gads!” she went on, making a face, “I'm sorry I thought of them. I hear they're even more the vogue now, what with that lusty
Byron warming up all the ladies, he and all those other ‘Romantic' layabouts.”

Pippa smiled too. Times like these made her think that what was happening to her grandmother was only fond memory making her escape to a happier time.

“Take my advice,” Lady Carstairs told the men, waving a ringed forefinger at them. “Never give houseroom to a poet. They languish and pose, trying to look sensitive and otherworldly. Most are handsome devils. But they're more lecherous than randy old men, and handier with females than sailors fresh from a two-year stint at sea. The housemaids' bottoms were black and blue, and not just because those poets' fingers were inky. They'll seduce anything that sits and listens to them long enough. We used to say you had to watch your lap dogs chastity when they were in your house. And mind, whether rich or poor, poets never put a pence in their host's pot, not the chamber pot nor cooking pot, and they eat like locusts too.

“But we'll avoid them in Brighton and have grand times with some real gentlemen. So learn to be like me,” Lady Carstairs cautioned Pippa. “Sleep the day away so you can be bright and smart all night. We're looking for your Noel, remember, not a bloody poet.”

Pippa blanched at the nasty word. The gentlemen didn't seem to notice. That was why, she thought with humiliation, they were gentlemen, after all.

Her grandmother went on, “We don't need the Old Place ringing with the noise of a rubbishy poet's brats, no matter how lusty the lad, do we, my love?”

Pippa cast down her gaze. She had to face it. She didn't know what was happening to her grandmother.

“But we ought to get some sleep now if we want to be at Brighton by tomorrow night,” Montrose said. “Because we'll have to leave bright and smart early tomorrow morning.”

“Ah well,” Lady Carstairs said, reluctantly putting down her cards. “So be it.”

For the first time since they'd met, Pippa really wanted to kiss Lord Montrose.

 

The wind held a hint of a tangy saline breeze from the sea. Pippa pulled her shawl more closely around her shoulders as she stood by the fence that enclosed the inn's kitchen garden. She looked out into the darkness. The world was quiet except for the trees sighing in the wind and soft insect
sounds. She breathed deep and felt the cool touch of the wind calming her. Her bedchamber had been too hot, her grandmother had snored too loud, and her heart had been too heavy to get to sleep. She didn't know what lay ahead, and was no longer sure of what was behind her. She wished she could go home; and yet she never wanted to go back again.

There was only a thin spindle of a moon, and looking up, she felt as lost as a spinning star in the vast firmament above her.

“Sometimes,” a velvety voice said from the shadows behind her, “on a journey, there comes a moment when longing for home conflicts with the desire to go on to a place where nothing is familiar.”

She didn't have to turn around. Pippa knew that voice and the sweet smell of the cigarillo she now scented on the night air. “Is that how you feel?” she asked.

“No,” Montrose said. He moved until he stood by her side. She saw the small red ember of his cigarillo in the utter darkness. It was a comforting glow in the deep night. “I always want to move on,” he mused. “But I recall feeling that way when I was as young as you are.”

“I'm no longer young,” she said in a whisper.

“Oh no,” he said low. There was laughter in his voice. “You are an old lady, to be sure.”

She didn't answer him. It was wrong to stand in the dark alone except for a virile male. She was very aware of his masculinity even though he had never made an improper gesture toward her, and she doubted he ever would. Except, tonight, here in the darkness, she was no longer sure of that.

His voice came softer. “You've never seen her act this way before?”

She didn't pretend she didn't know what he was talking about. She shook her head, forgetting that he mightn't see it in the darkness.

But he did. “Have you written to your grandfather to tell him about it?”

She shook her head again, and shivering, tugged her shawl more closely around herself. “I don't want to turn back now,” she said. “And if he thinks she's failing he may order us home. But I must find out what happened to Noel, and I know I won't be allowed to go on alone.”

She spun to face him, her eyes wide and gleaming in the scant light of the ravaged moon. “Do you think she'll do herself some harm?” she asked. “When she's with you gentlemen she forgets herself, or remembers herself, I can't say which. It's
only words, but what words! She was never vulgar before or ever said anything racy. She and my grandfather never uttered a word out of place to me or each other or the servants.”