To Pleasure a Prince (5 page)

His gaze swung to her. “Why would Draker expect to go along?”

“Because that’s his condition for allowing this—that you let him oversee the courtship.”

“I don’t want him overseeing it! What sort of courtship is that?”

“The proper sort, that’s what.”

“But I can’t have him hanging about while I’m with Louisa. It will ruin everything.”

Her eyes narrowed. “How so?”

The veiled look that came over his features gave Regina pause.
I think your brother is using my sister.
Could that cursed man be right about Simon’s motives, after all?

Her brother caught her staring and stiffened. “Draker will spend his time sniping at me, and I’ll be forced to defend myself, which will surely make Louisa angry. How can I court a woman when her brother is insulting me at every turn?”

She searched Simon’s face, but his words made sense. “Tell me something, why do you want to court Louisa? You met her only a few weeks ago, and you barely know her.”

“I know enough. She’s a fine girl—well-read, interesting, accomplished—”

“So you want to marry her for herself,” she prodded, ignoring the fact that “well-read” was at the top of his list. Thank God Simon didn’t know of her own weakness.

He looked her right in the eye. “Of course. Did Draker say otherwise?”

No point in rousing Simon’s temper by telling him of the viscount’s suspicions. Especially when they were clearly unfounded.

“No, I merely wanted to be sure.”
Aha, Lord Draker—I told you that you were wrong about him.
“So you truly don’t care that there’s scandal associated with her family. And that she’s not all that sophisticated.”

“Do
you
care?” he countered.

“No. But I’m not considering marrying her.”

Regina was, however, going to be living with any wife Simon chose, since she never intended to marry herself. That’s why she fully intended to have a say in his choice, whether he knew it or not.

She needed Simon to find someone who could help Cicely with her duties, so their poor cousin would not be so overtaxed. And both she and Cicely liked sweet Louisa. Louisa wouldn’t try to change their way of living or put on airs like the saucy females Simon always seemed to fancy. Louisa would be a friend who could be trusted with her secret, and Regina had none of those.

Oh, she had female friends, but they all believed in her carefully cultivated image of sophistication. Take that away, and they would devour her whole. Mama was not the only person in society to demand perfection.

But Louisa wouldn’t. And once the dear girl married Simon, her loyalties would be with the family, thank God.

Which was why Regina had to bring the girl’s wretched brother around. “Since you mean to marry Louisa,” she told Simon matter-of-factly, “you’ll need her guardian’s consent, or you’ll have to elope. And now that I’ve arranged a way to obtain it, why not take advantage? How can it hurt to show him that your intentions are honorable?”

A muscle tightened in Simon’s jaw as he settled back against the squabs. “I suppose you’re right. It isn’t as if we have to spend much time with the blasted fellow. A party here or there. I can still see Louisa in private as we discussed.”

Regina stiffened. “Absolutely not. For one thing, Louisa won’t do it now that her brother has approved a formal courtship. And part of my agreement with his lordship was that the courtship would be entirely public and proper.”

Simon’s eyes narrowed. “For how long?”

“A month.”

“Regina!” Cicely exclaimed. “You agreed to let that devil court you for a
month?”

“Devil?” Simon demanded. “Court who? What are you talking about?”

Oh, dear, sometimes Cicely was entirely too overprotective. Regina shot her cousin an exasperated glance before turning to Simon. “His lordship and I made a bargain. In exchange for his agreeing to let you and Louisa court, I agreed to let him court me.”

“Are you out of your mind?” he roared. “You agreed to let the Dragon Viscount court you? A man who’d ravish you as soon as look at you?”

“Don’t be absurd. He may be gruff, but he’s a gentleman.” Assuming that one’s definition of “gentleman” was rather broad.

“The man can’t get a woman even to look at him, yet you promise to endure his attentions for a month? Why, Regina?”

“Because he practically dared me to do it, that’s why. He’s so sure that you—that
we
—are wicked creatures who will corrupt Louisa. I couldn’t refuse his challenge and confirm his opinion.”

“Even if it means you’re banned from parties because you have the notorious Dragon Viscount in tow?”

“Stuff and nonsense. I should hope my own standing is secure enough to allow me the occasional eccentric suitor. I might even reverse his outcast status, and think what a coup that would be. All of society would be talking about it.”

“Is that what this is about? You’re bored with your volunteer work at Chelsea Hospital and need a new project? You think to tidy him up and teach him some social graces?”

“Not exactly, but I do believe that with a little subtle persuasion—”

Simon snorted. “Not likely. Draker isn’t like those poor saps who worship at your feet. You won’t train
him
to behave with just your icy reproofs.” He eyed her consideringly. “But it could be entertaining to watch you try. Very well, see if you can civilize his lordship. If anybody can force him to his knees, you can.”

“I wish you wouldn’t put it like that.” Bad enough that the viscount and everyone else thought her a “haughty bitch.” Must her brother do so, too?

“In fact, let’s make the endeavor more interesting. I’ll wager that even a month of your ‘subtle persuasions’ cannot turn his lordship into a gentleman suitable for society. And if I win the wager, you agree not to interfere anymore in my courtship with Louisa.”

She’d been going to refuse his detestable wager, until his last words. Why wouldn’t he want her to help him in his courtship? He ought to be grateful.

I’m not sure that marriage is his true intention.

She stiffened. “If
I
win, then you agree to ask Lord Draker formally for Louisa’s hand. And to abide by his answer.”

With indrawn breath, she waited for his response. If Simon accepted her terms, then he did mean to marry Louisa, and Lord Draker was wrong.

Simon cocked one eyebrow. “Done. But you will not win. The man may take the chance to court you, but he will never become another of your toadying puppies to command.”

She glowered at him. “Why do you assume that’s what I want from him? I might be interested in the man for himself, you know.”

Simon laughed. “You’ve never shown interest in any man who wasn’t a blindingly handsome nitwit you could make dance to your tune.”

True. But that was because clever men were liable to unveil her secret shame. At least the nitwits never guessed that she couldn’t read.

But then they didn’t care either, which is probably why she never did more than let them squire her to parties. She couldn’t bring herself to marry a nitwit.

Or anybody else. Even if her husband accepted her defect, she dared not risk having children. What if she passed it on to them? What if her children’s brains were even more damaged than hers? She couldn’t take that chance.

“By all accounts,” Simon went on, “Draker is ugly—”

“He’s
not
ugly.”

Simon arched one eyebrow. “If you say so. But he’s a clever man of letters steeped in scandalous rumor. Definitely not your sort.”

“Perhaps my tastes have changed.”

“You mean you’ve decided to cut your teeth on something meatier? Be careful, dear girl. Setting your sights higher is an admirable goal, but starting with the likes of Draker is insanity.”

“I told her that,” Cicely put in. “She just won’t listen.”

Because she couldn’t bear to let the man continue his arrogant assumptions when she had the power to prove him wrong. “Think what you wish, but I will take your wager, and I will win.” If only to make sure Simon did this courtship properly.

He laughed. “Very well, have your fun. And when you fail, and the devil continues opposing our match, Louisa will wash her hands of him at last, leaving us to do as we please.”

Regina gritted her teeth. “I shall not fail. No brother of mine shall sneak about town with his ladylove like some reckless rogue. I’ll make sure of that.”

The best weapon against unwanted suitors is a dire look. Use a mirror to practice your disapproving glances.

—Miss Cicely Tremaine,
The Ideal Chaperone

M
arcus frowned as he paced the foyer of Foxmoor’s spacious and extravagantly furnished mansion in town. The butler had told him that Lady Regina would be down momentarily, but she’d already kept him waiting a full fifteen minutes. That was probably part of her attempt to bring him to heel.

Very well, let her play her little games; they would not affect him. She might be a siren, but he was as immovable as Ulysses tied to the mast. Like Ulysses, he would allow himself to hear her dangerous song without succumbing to its allure.

“You must be Draker,” said a voice from behind him.

He turned to find a man approaching—young, blond, and dressed in a fine suit of dark blue silk. If Marcus hadn’t recognized the duke from Louisa’s coming-out ball, he still would have known him by the marked resemblance he bore to Lady Regina. The man was too handsome by half, certainly too handsome to make a sweet girl like Louisa happy.

Marcus hated him instantly. “Hello, Foxmoor.”

The man stopped short. “Have we met before?”

“Not exactly, but I know who you are.”

“Excellent.” The duke held out his hand, but Marcus ignored it. After a moment, Foxmoor dropped his hand. “So you’re here to court Regina?”

Marcus eyed him warily. “She told you about our…er…”

“Bargain? Yes. Very peculiar, that.” His mouth hardened. “I’m not sure I approve, but Regina has a tendency to do as she pleases no matter what I say. One of the trials of having sisters, I suppose.”

“I haven’t had that sort of trouble myself.” Marcus gave a thin smile. “My sister knows better than to act without my permission.”

Foxmoor’s eyes narrowed. “I wouldn’t count on that. Miss North has a mind of her own, which you’ll learn soon enough if you force her to choose between us.”

“Louisa will never choose you if I have anything to say about it.”

Foxmoor’s smile stopped short of his eyes. “You won’t.”

Marcus scowled. “Now see here, you calculating weasel—”

“That’s enough, both of you.”

They whirled toward the stairs at the same time. But while Simon began to frown at the sight of his sister in her evening gown, Marcus was struck dumb.

Had he thought her beautiful before? He’d been deranged. That had been the plain Lady Regina, the one who paid calls to reclusive country gentlemen.
This
was Lady Regina in full society regalia, La Belle Dame Sans Merci in all her glory. A vision of loveliness in pink crepe and pearls.

And he’d thought she couldn’t bring him to heel. If he didn’t watch it, she’d soon have him leaping into the water to drown himself at her siren feet.

He watched as she descended the stairs, her overskirt floating around the white satin gown skimming her shapely curves. Another hat adorned her gilded hair, this one pink satin with two dangling white tassels that barely trembled as she glided toward them. He hadn’t known a woman could move as smoothly, or as sensuously, as that. Even her stern expression couldn’t quell the quickening of Marcus’s pulse at the sight of her.

“Behave yourself,” she said, and for half a second, Marcus thought she was talking about the heat rising in his loins. But no, she was speaking to Foxmoor. “I refuse to spend the evening listening to you bait his lordship,” she told her brother in a silky voice that made Marcus’s blood run even hotter.

“Me!” Foxmoor protested.

“He was kind enough to indulge my request that he give you a chance, and I won’t have you go at him with daggers drawn. Either behave civilly, or we will leave you here, and you’ll have to take your own carriage.”

“A capital idea,” Marcus muttered.

That only drew her withering stare to him. “As for you, my lord, I suppose I shall have to overlook your deplorably unfashionable evening clothes.” While a footman scurried to help her don a pelisse, she eyed Marcus askance. “I suppose you lacked the time to purchase new evening attire for your entry into society—”

“The time
and
the inclination to spend money so frivolously,” he retorted. “Especially when I possess a perfectly good coat already.”

“And here I thought you were wealthy. Apparently I was mistaken.” Before he could respond to that insult, she continued in that sugary voice of hers, “But razors aren’t costly. So what reason could you possibly have for ignoring my advice about shaving off your beard?”

Did she mean to lecture him with impunity? Not damned likely. “What lies beneath my beard is no sight for a lady. You of all people should understand that, given how important you deem physical appearance.”

If she realized he was insulting her, she didn’t show it. “That means you should let
me
judge whether what lies beneath your beard is a sight for ladies.”

“Ah, but then if you shrank back in horror, it would take me weeks to grow the beard back properly, during which time I’d be deprived of your company.”

She smiled. “Would that be such a loss for you?”

“We made a bargain, and I mean to hold you to it.” He held out his arm, ignoring the way her smile faltered. “Shall we go?”

As she took it, a snigger from his left made him glance over to find Foxmoor fighting back a laugh.

She glared at her brother. “Something wrong, Simon?”

“No, nothing,” he answered, eyes alight with amusement. “I’ll just fetch Cicely. She’s in the drawing room.”

When he walked off, his shoulders shaking with laughter, Marcus glanced down at Lady Regina. “Was it something I said?”

“My brother thinks you’re incapable of behaving like a gentleman. And you prove him right with every word out of your mouth.”

He suppressed his irritation. “As I recall, our bargain didn’t include any assurances that I’d behave like a gentleman.”

“True. But I didn’t realize you meant to spend our time together trying to embarrass me.”

He stared her down. “I’m planning to be myself. If that embarrasses you—”

“No need to get all dragonlike and huffy about it. I assure you I’m very hard to embarrass.”

“No, your forte is probably embarrassing other people.”

She flinched, then glanced away. “Of course. That’s what my sort excel at. How clever of you to have found us out.”

Damn. Had he actually hurt her feelings?

No, that was impossible. Her “sort” prided themselves on being able to shame someone with a word. She was only angry that he’d beaten her to the insult.

Moments later, her brother returned with a woman in tow. As Foxmoor performed the introductions, Marcus examined Miss Cicely Tremaine, who was clearly her ladyship’s duenna. Even the great Lady Regina couldn’t venture into public without a chaperone.

But the fiftyish Miss Tremaine, though wan and thin, looked alert enough to keep even the most determined suitor at bay. She obviously meant to do her duty, which was fine by him. Marcus didn’t need to insult Lady Regina with physical overtures. Just showing up at the soiree with her would be enough to make her reconsider any association between their families.

Indeed, her lesson had already begun, for clearly her duenna found him repugnant. When they entered his carriage, and he and Foxmoor situated themselves across from the two ladies, Miss Tremaine couldn’t look at him without frowning. And when Marcus tried to make himself more comfortable in the cramped carriage and his leg brushed hers, her look of horror was almost comical.

Almost.

Gritting his teeth, he reminded himself that he
wanted
this reaction. He wanted Lady Regina to witness how people outside Castlemaine always regarded him—with fear, revulsion, suspicion, or contempt.

Except for the lady herself, that is. But she was probably well schooled in disguising her reactions.

As the carriage set off, his gaze shot to where she sat across from him. She truly was a master at hiding her feelings. She was the only person whose opinion of him he couldn’t read.

All the more reason not to trust her.

When she caught him watching her, she smiled. “I hear that Louisa is to play both the pianoforte and the harp this evening. I had no idea she was a harpist.”

“She isn’t. She plays it very ill. But whenever I point that out, she insists that I don’t appreciate harp music sufficiently to judge.”

“Miss North plays the harp like an angel,” Foxmoor bit out.

Marcus eyed him askance. “Yes, she looks perfectly angelic when she plays it. Too bad the music she produces is about as angelic as an owl’s screech.”

Lady Regina laughed. “Simon wouldn’t know—he’s practically tone-deaf. An owl’s screech or a nightingale’s warble are all the same to him.”

“And you?” Marcus asked Lady Regina. “Do you have an ear for good music properly played?”

“I’ve been told that I do. And though your sister may not play the harp very well—I’ll have to reserve my judgment since I haven’t yet heard her—she has a lovely singing voice and is more than adequate on the pianoforte.”

He snorted. “She ought to be, considering how much I paid her music teachers.”

“I thought you didn’t spend money frivolously,” she quipped.

“It isn’t frivolous to protect one’s ears.”

A reluctant smile touched her pretty lips. “Is that why Louisa paints such nice watercolors? Because you took measures to protect your eyes?”

“The best art teachers money could buy.”

“Sweet heaven, all that protection must have cost you dearly.” Her eyes twinkled at him from across the carriage. “What with the dancing masters to protect your feet and the riding masters to protect your Thorough-breds—”

“Not to mention the tutors to protect my reason from daily assault.” He shot her a deprecating glance. “Ah, but then you probably don’t consider it important to educate a woman’s mind. God forbid she should know Shakespeare or read Aristotle to improve her reasoning. As long as she’s pretty and accomplished in the feminine arts, it doesn’t matter if she’s stupid, does it?”

Her smile vanished. “Of course not.” She glanced out the carriage window. “We’ve reached our destination—what a pity for you. Now you’ll have to wait until we get through the door to continue enumerating my faults.”

His jaw tightened. He wasn’t sure how he’d done it, but this time he knew he’d wounded her.

Fine. That would teach her not to play with dragons, wouldn’t it?

After they left the carriage, and Lady Regina swept ahead of him, arm in arm with Miss Tremaine, Foxmoor fell back to join Marcus. “Good show, old man—excellent courting technique, the whole insult thing. She’ll be yours in no time.”

As Foxmoor then hurried ahead with a smug smile, Marcus nearly called out that he didn’t
want
her to be his. But that would tip his hand to the enemy, and he wasn’t about to do that.

Nonetheless, even the sight of Louisa waiting impatiently in the doorway for their arrival could not banish his disquiet.

“Marcus!” Louisa cried as he approached. “You really did come! Lady Iversley said that you were going to, but I didn’t dare believe her.”

A lump lodged in his throat as he looked her over, marveling again at how grown-up she seemed these days. “How could I miss my sister’s grand performance?” he said gruffly as he bent his head to kiss her cheek.

She swatted his arm with her fan. “Fiddlesticks—you missed my court presentation and you missed my coming-out ball. I hardly think you came here for
me.”
With eyes sparkling, she glanced inside to where Lady Regina and Foxmoor were being greeted by the Iversleys. “But I don’t mind.”

The lump in his throat slid down to settle like a rock in his belly. Damn, he hadn’t even considered how Louisa would react to his showing up here with Lady Regina. Louisa thought this was a real courtship, which couldn’t be good.

“Don’t get your hopes up, angel,” he murmured. “Dipping one’s toe in the water isn’t the same as going for a swim.”

“It could be,” she said brightly. “If one discovers that the water is fine.”

He wasn’t expecting the water to be fine. But he could hardly tell her that.

He didn’t have to. As he led her inside the bustling foyer, the sounds of chatter died. Except for the conversation continuing between their hosts and Lady Regina, complete silence reigned as every eye turned to him.

For a second, he was transported to his first ball all those years ago. A bumbling seventeen-year-old, he’d tried to be the gentleman his mother wanted, but he’d been too big and awkward to do more than embarrass her.

Back then, however, the looks leveled on him had merely been pitying or contemptuous. Now they were downright hostile.

He reacted as he always did. Badly. “I’ve come to devour the virgins,” he growled. “Anyone care to tell me where they sit?”

That broke the silence, largely because people fled the foyer in a noisy rush. Here and there he heard their whispers: “the audacity of the man” and “how dared they invite him?” and the words “Dragon Viscount.”

“I see nothing has changed in society in nine years,” Marcus told Louisa. “Sorry, angel, I didn’t mean to ruin your party.”

She sniffed. “You haven’t ruined it, but if you keep on being such a surly—”

“Ass?” he said helpfully.

“There, that’s what I mean. You say these crude things even though you know better. If you’d give people a chance, and at least
try
to be courteous—”

“Lord Draker!” Katherine hurried over. “How good of you to come!”

“No need to shout,” he said. “I’ve already run everyone off.”

Katherine paled. “I’m sorry, Marcus—I meant to catch you at the door, but I thought you and Louisa were still outside. I should have paid better attention—”

“It’s all right.” He hadn’t meant to upset Katherine, whom he respected enormously. “I’m used to people’s reactions. Rolls right off my scaly back.”

At least it was only for one night; Lady Regina wouldn’t last beyond that. After this soiree, she’d think twice about linking her brother to his sister. He’d make sure of it.

His resolve hardened when Foxmoor said, “Shall we?” and held out his arm to Louisa, who left Marcus’s side to join the devil.

Marcus glared at the man’s back, then turned to Lady Regina. “Shall we brave the crowd, too, madam?” He offered her his arm, waiting to hear an excuse.