To Wed a Rake (4 page)

March 22, 1817

Lady Dyott to Miss Loudan, St. Albans, Hertfordshire

Dear Emma,

We bought the pony, and two other horses that caught Dyott’s fancy. I’m writing to urge you to come to London; no one is talking of Kerr’s impudent remarks anymore, and the season is well in force. The only subject on everyone’s lips is Lord Cavendish’s masquerade ball that he holds at Burlington House. Dyott and I attend as Caesar and his wife. I understand that Caesar’s wife was quite unexceptionable, although I have demanded that my go. &wwn cover rather more of my figure than was apparently common in the period. By all accounts Rome is warmer than London. I know you will likely stay with your sister, but we can mount you on a very nice mare. She has a good mouth and beautiful hocks.
A touchy disposition, alas, but I never saw a mare that you couldn’t handle.

Yours,

Your cousin Mary, Lady Dyott

The Countess of Bredalbane was never one to stand on ceremony. When Gil walked into her house at age twelve, orphaned, starched outwardly, and inwardly crumpled, she took one look at him and said, “Thank God, you’re not too young for backgammon. I loathe children.” And so, while his younger brother Walter was taken to the nursery and deposited with a nursemaid, Gil found himself seated at a backgammon board and sharing his store of jokes, those about gluttons, and scholars, and even the one about the priest and the dairymaid. The countess liked them all, except for a joke about a shrew and a sheep. Her eyes flashed, and she told him to avoid offense, and then told him a bawdy jest about a gentleman and his wife’s jewelry box, not a word of which he understood. But he laughed and laughed and felt quite comforted.

Almost twenty years later, her hair was just as black as ever and her eyes just as fierce as the moment when he strayed into that joke about a shrew. She paused in the doorway. “The time has come, Kerr!”

“It’s lovely to see you, too,” he said, crossing the room to kiss her cheek.

“I’m serious,” she said, pushing past him and his kiss to sit in her favorite upright chair beside the window. She never cared about the fact that sunlight cast harsh light on her wrinkles; she loved seeing who passed the house too much for such nonsense. “You must marry Emma, and directly. You’ve made a fool of yourself—and worse, of
her—with your foolish quotations. And just what were you up to at the opera, pray?”

“Accompanying a lovely young lady,” he said mildly. “May I offer you a glass of ratafia?”

“What’s the o’clock?” she demanded.

“Two in the afternoon.”

“I’ll have a brandy,” she said. “I never drink before nuncheon, you know, but one might have a sustainer now and then.”

He motioned to Cooper. Of course, his butler had had the brandy poured from the moment his godmother entered the room.

Suddenly she thumped her stick. “No flummering me with your pretty manners, Kerr. You’ve always had the gift for sweet talk. But this is serious.”

“I know it,” he acknowledged, sitting down. “I don’t mean to tease you. I’ve sent a letter to my man of affairs, informing him of my upcoming nuptials. I do want to assure you that I never meant to duck my responsibility to Miss Loudan. At first, I didn’t wish to pressure her, given her mother’s prolonged illness, and then somehow the time slipped away after Walter died. I can’t go to St. Albans this week—”

“A horse is no excuse!” she interrupted.

“We’re bringing the vote on the
Habeas Corpus
Act to the House this week. Since I sponsored the move to revoke its suspension, I need to stay for the hearing.”

“Ah,” she said begrudgingly. “I suppose that’s a better excuse than some. So why did you offer me all that Spanish coin about your horse and your tailor and the rest?”

“Because I greatly dislike having my affairs curtailed or arranged due to gossip circulating through the group of ccohe groufoolish people that passes for the
ton
,” he said, and there was steel in his voice.

“That’s the way of the world,” she said, but she looked into her glass rather than at him. “At any rate, there’s nothing about
habeas corpus
that requires you to make a fool of yourself with French prostitutes.”

“If you refer to my escort at the opera, Marie is not a prostitute,” Gil said, a little half smile playing on his lips. “She’s a generous woman, that’s all.”

The countess snorted.

“I thought she’d distract people’s attention from the rumor that I might marry Mademoiselle Benoit,” he noted.

“Well, it did that. Now everyone’s wondering which member of the French nation you’ll bring to the Cavendish masquerade.”

“What costume shall you wear?” he enquired, changing the subject.

Her eyes snapped at him. “I’m going as Cleopatra,” she said. “And I’ll thank you to go alone, Kerr. I’ve no wish to see you escort yet another light-heeled Frenchwoman and make me hesitate to open my correspondence in the morning. You’ll come alone, and the following day you’ll go to St. Albans and marry Emma,
if
she’ll still have you.”

“Her refusal is, of course, always a possibility.”

“Don’
t look so damned hopeful about it!” his godmother snapped.

Bethany Lynn was beside herself with anxiety. Her elder sister had, by all appearances, utterly lost her mind, and nothing Bethany said seemed to convince her otherwise. “Kerr will never believe you’re French!” she said desperately. “Everyone says that he did nothing but drink and seduce women when he was in Paris. He’s an
expert
on the subject of Frenchwomen.”

“Of course I can fool the man,” Emma answered, clearly unperturbed. “I shall pretend I’m with Mama. She never spoke a word of English in the last two years of her life; there were times when I felt I was forgetting my native tongue.”

“You don’t look in the least French.”

“Sometimes I feel as if I understand men better than you, for all that you’re married,” Emma said. “My expectation is that if I throw on a French accent, babble a few
phrases, and appear happy to see him, my true nationality will not matter. I’ll make him believe that we first met in Paris.”

“He’ll never believe that,” Bethany insisted.

“You just said that Kerr admits to being so routinely drunk that he could have had a clandestine encounter with the Empress Josephine without remembering. What’s more, I know the name his intimates call him. I’ll use it to prove our acquaintance.”

“What is it?” Bethany asked.

“Gil. His godmother, the Countess of Bredelbane, wrote me with that bit of information. She writes quite regularly, trying to make up for her godson’s neglect.”

“I’m not convinced,” Bethany said stubbornly.

“From what I’ve heard in the village,” Emma answered, knowing that she was about to shock her little sister, “if one wishes to seduce a man, therappe are only two tools that matter: alcohol and a scanty gown. Most of the stories I hear have to do with either a drunken man or a naked woman. Or both.”

“Who is telling you such things?” Bethany demanded. “You’d think the village women would have more respect for the delicacy of a young lady.”

Emma snorted. “And if I was so delicate, who would help birth the village babies?”

Bethany scowled. “You know what I mean.”

“The point is that if I can’t get Kerr to drink himself into a fever of lust, I’ll simply unclothe myself, and that will do it. By all accounts, a man cannot resist the sight of the undressed female form. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Suddenly Bethany had a little smile on her lips that made Emma feel a sudden stab of envy. Her little sister’s betrothal dated back to her fifth birthday, just as did Emma’s, but Bethany’s future husband, John, appeared on their
doorstep after Bethany’s sixteenth birthday, took one good look at his bride’s brandy-colored curls and blue eyes, and promptly began begging for an early ceremony. That was in sharp contrast to her own betrothed, who had driven out to St. Albans to formalize the betrothal once he was of age, stopped by casually a few times if he happened to be hunting in the district, and hadn’t been seen at all for the past three years.

“You should probably leave your hair down,” Bethany said, beginning to get into the spirit of the thing. “And show lots of bosom.”

“I can do that,” Emma said, pulling pins from her dark red hair. It fell to the middle of her back.

“Frenchwomen always wear
maquillage
,” her sister pointed out. “You would laugh to see how many ladies in London paint a red circle on their cheek and think it gives them the air of a French
comtesse.
”

“I already use
maquillage
,” Emma said.

Bethany peered at her. “Oh. You’ve darkened your lashes.”

“And my eyebrows.”

“You’re locked away in the country, and you wear the very best gowns and face paints. And yet you look—well, you look absolutely delicious, Emma. Why?”

“I feel better when I am properly dressed. But I do think you’re right. I’ve been without an audience.”

“This is absurd!” Bethany said, reversing herself. “Kerr will recognize you. Be serious, Emma! He may not have visited in a few years, but he’s seen you on at least five or six occasions, and one does tend to examine the face of one’s future bride rather closely.”

“He won’t recognize me with a mask on,” Emma said, grinning at Bethany.

“A mask? You mean Vauxhall?”

“No. I was thinking of Lord Cavendish’s masquerade ball.”

“Oh!” Bethany said with a gasp of excitement. “What a brilliant thought, Emma! I have an invitation.”

“A masquerade will be an excellent arena for our first meeting in years,” Emma said. “I’ll wear that Elizabethan gown and mask that belonged to Great-Aunt Gertrude. Do you remember it?”

“She was our great-
great
aunt,” Bethany remarked. “Of course I do! Remember how angry Father was when I tried it on and trailed about in the dust? He said the jewels on it were worth as much as my dowry.”

“A few years ago I had it cleaned and stored properly in a wardrobe,” Emma sai C01Dn thed. “It was far too beautiful to leave as a supper for moths in the attic. It will make a perfect disguise. I’ll go as an Elizabethan lady, and wear the mask that accompanies the dress. It covers most of my face, so I’ll be unrecognizable.”