A Pair of Rogues (13 page)

Her valiant effort to cover up an all-too-obvious misery relieved Ned’s tension as it brought a reluctant smile to his lips.

“It pains me to deprive you of the pleasure you were so evidently enjoying when I entered the salon. Nevertheless, I fear I must.”

This second proof of his perspicacity rendered her temporarily speechless. Fighting a betraying smile, Christina struggled for breath.

“You heard the lady.” Levington’s feeble threat was made in a low, cautious growl.

Christina’s raised voice had caused a number of heads to turn their way. Soon the boxer from the door, an old sparring partner of Ned’s, would come to discover the cause of the disturbance.

“This young lady—” Ned was careful not to employ Christina’s name “—will be leaving under my escort. I shall see her safely home.”

“Over my dead body.”

At Levington’s stubbornness, Ned’s temper rekindled.

He took a step nearer, permitting Levington to see the fury in his gaze. The baron started back with an involuntary step, but, remembering their audience, he resumed a threatening pose.

“You may make as big a scene as you like,” Ned spoke through a tightened jaw. “But if you do, you will find yourself the bane of polite society. What do you suppose the duke’s reaction will be if he discovers you have walked out with his sister without his permission? That alone should ruin you. But when it is discovered to what type of establishment you have brought her, an innocent lady, you will never again be received in polite company. I guarantee it.”

Levington was trying not to flinch under the lashing from Ned’s tongue, but he found it impossible not to blanch. He stammered, “I merely acceded to the lady’s own request. I knew it wasn’t prudent for her to be seen at a house like this. That’s why I arranged for the masks.”

Ned nodded grimly. “I am happy to find you had that much sense at least. Show more on this occasion, and I shall take her home without further ado. Our quarrel would best be left for later, if you wish for one.”

Levington’s gaze had flitted to Christina’s masked face and back to Ned’s several times while he was listening. Now, he only hesitated a moment before making a bow. Wishing Christina goodnight, he made his apologies for not being able to escort her home and quickly retired.

As soon as he was gone, Ned took Christina by the arm and said, “Where is your cloak?”

Her struggles to free herself were easily foiled by the tightness of his grip. Abashed, she quit after only a few useless yanks, raising her chin as if she’d decided on her own that it was time to leave.

“I left it with the footman near the door.”

“Then let us fetch it.”

With no more words between them, they found her wrap and headed out of the house. Ned quickly hired them a passing vehicle and thrust her inside.

* * * *

Christina’s pulse skipped a beat when Ned set himself beside her on the bench. She told herself it was purely from annoyance that her evening had been spoiled, but a cold nugget of dread had settled in her stomach. She knew she had driven him too far.

If Ned was not entirely disgusted by her behavior this evening, she would be very much surprised. But she had been forced by the relentless need to escape the confines of her loneliness to seek a scandalous relief. How could he expect her to sit at home and make endless polite conversation at balls, when her heart felt as if it had a great, gaping hole in its center?

She was determined not to be the first to speak. She would never apologize for her conduct even though she knew it had been in the wrong.

She might have known she had no need to worry. Ned was perfectly capable of launching an attack.

His strategy, however, surprised her, as he leaned back against the side of the carriage. In a mildly curious voice, which held an indefinable current, he said, “I wonder if you could tell me why you seem so hell-bent on destroying the one possession with which a lady is blessed.”

“If you mean my reputation, I would say it is because I place a much lower value on it than you do.”

“That is perfectly obvious. But I find myself surprised that you would risk your security as well.”

Christina felt a start. “I do not perfectly understand you.”

“No? Then, all the more reason for worry. Are you truly so green that you have no notion of the danger you have just escaped?”

“Escaped?” She laughed. “As I recall, I was having a perfectly splendid time until you saw fit to deprive me of an enjoyable evening.”

“Let us not play games, Christina.” His casual tone had vanished. “If it has fallen to me to educate you, then I shall do it, rudely or no.

“Has it not occurred to you that you put yourself entirely in the power of Lord Levington? A man, you have been repeatedly informed, is a desperate fortune-hunter who might quite logically have designs on a girl as wealthy as you. Count yourself fortunate that he did not take advantage of the situation you offered him to force a condition that would make you grateful to marry him, or for Robert to pay twice any price he asked.”

Christina felt all the humiliating justness of Ned’s words. A sting started behind her eyelids, but she could not easily forgive him for having uttered the truth in such a way.

She would not cave in to his scolding. “You much mistake the case, my lord. Lord Levington would do nothing to harm me. I was in no danger whatsoever.”

“No danger!”

She could almost hear his frustration mounting. In the darkness, she could dimly see the hard-cut planes of his face.

“What you need, my dear, is an experience that will open your eyes to most gentlemen’s motives.”

“Oh? And what could those possibly be?”

Instead of answering her immediately, Ned gave a low, unamused chuckle, a sign that she had got his goat again. At the sound, Christina’s spirits began to rise.

“Never you mind,” he said grimly, “but a good, thorough kiss from one of your swains would put an end to this recklessness of yours.”

“A kiss?” Despite the instant pulse that had leapt into her throat, she would not allow him to intimidate her again. “A simple kiss means nothing to me. I cannot see why you would believe such a tiny thing would frighten me.”

“I’m talking about a man’s kiss, my dear. Not a parent’s or a nursemaid’s.”

Infusing boredom into her voice, Christina treated him to a condescending laugh. “My dear, sweet Ned. Surely you must realize that I have been mauled before.”

She felt him start up on the bench, before he quickly reined his temper in. Feeling his tension coiled beside her, she could not resist one final jab.

“The art master at my seminary confessed he was desperately in love with me.” Ennui dripped like honey from her lips. “But his overtures were simply tiresome, not the least bit frightening.”

Before she could even finish this speech, Ned’s body loomed in front of her. His silhouette blocked the light from the street. “I said a man, Christina. Not a bloody art master.”

With a move so smooth she barely felt it coming, he wrapped her thoroughly in his arms. His hands tangled in the hair at the nape of her neck and, with a yank, he forced her to raise her chin.

He untied her mask and slid it back from her face. When Christina gasped at the feeling of bareness, Ned pressed his lips to hers.

She
had
been kissed. Or, at least, she’d thought she had, if the art master’s struggles to meet with her mouth had met the terms of a kiss. Whatever they had been, the incident had been enough to have her sent down. Only her mother’s high indignation had caused her to be reinstated.

But those clumsy fumblings had been nothing like this. No unerring aim to invade her mouth like a fresh taste of mint. No warmth from someone’s lips to heat her own, carrying fire all the way down to her toes. No increasing tenderness to make the sound of his quickened breathing a melody to her ears.

`Christina melted towards him. Her eyelids drifted closed and she offered her neck most willingly to the nibbles he trailed down her skin. Ned’s hands, those beautiful long-fingered hands, whose strength she’d gazed at and admired, stroked her face and throat, framing his soft, burning kisses and his deepening moans with the gentleness she’d always known he possessed.

When he pulled away, pushing her from him abruptly, Christina issued a sigh of disappointment.

Ned’s voice was ragged as he said, “That was a kiss, my dear.”

“Was it?” She couldn’t hide a dreamy note. “I shouldn’t call that frightening.”

“No?” There was a hint of pain in his tone. “Perhaps I should have been less the gentleman then.”

Turning sharply from her, Ned called up to the driver to stop. Christina noted, then, that they had arrived at the corner of Grosvenor Square. Ned’s irritated tone had shaken her out of her fog. Cold despair settled in.

“If my kiss didn’t frighten you,” he said through gritted teeth, “you might try imagining Levington’s instead.

“Where is this window of yours?” With an abrupt change of subject, he took her by the hand and pulled her roughly after him out of the carriage. He yanked upon her cloak, drawing it closely about her unmasked face.

“What window?” She’d been knocked for a loss by the sudden alteration in his mood.

“The one you used to escape.”

She poked her chin in the air and tightened her lips to stop their quivering. “I did not climb out of a window. My maid helped me out. She will be waiting to let me in by the pantry door.”

“Bribed her, did you? I should have thought as much.”

“No.” Christina bit back. “She is devoted to me.”

“Then, I shall have to pity her.”

It was cold in the street without the slightest hint of daylight to warm it, but Christina’s shaking had begun in Ned’s arms and it wouldn’t stop. Her teeth were chattering. If not with fear, then with something much more alarming.

“You may leave me here. I do not require your assistance.” Her insolent manner was meant to punish him for getting her into this state, then treating her like such a brute.

But Ned was so intent upon returning her to the house, he did not seem to notice her tone as he led her around through the mews.

“Hush!” he threw back over his shoulder.

Fuming, Christina, nevertheless, minded her tongue. She knew as well as he what Robert would think if he found them out together at this hour of the night. He would never forgive either of them, and he would quite likely make them marry. As if she would go along with such a maddening idea!

The rear door stood in complete darkness. Christina swept past Ned and made a light scratching sound on the panel near her ear.

The sounds of a scraping chair leg, a quick, light step, and the clunk of a bolt being thrown with a soft cry of relief, and Mary’s face appeared in the opening, cast in light by a candle in her hand.

“Thank goodness you’ve come ‘ome, miss!”

“Does my brother know I’ve been gone?”

“No, miss. They ‘aven’t come in, yet. I was just that worried!”

“There was no need, Mary, as I told you.”

While Christina had been greeting her maid, Ned had remained with one foot on the threshold.

Now, he gave a snort. “You would serve your mistress better, Mary, if you refused to help her in these escapades.”

Mary gave a bobbing curtsy. Her whisper rose on a wail. “And don’t I know it, my lord. But t’is all I can do to see she dresses like a Christian and not one of them heathenish statues you see. I see you took good care of her, my lord.”

“I did, indeed.”

There was no understanding the exact timber of Ned’s last words, but Christina felt a leap in her heart at the thought of what had passed between them in the carriage. Her face felt as if it had been scrubbed with sand, and she wondered if the skin about her lips looked as chafed as it felt.

Fortunately, to keep from attracting the other servants’ attention, Mary had lit only one candle, and a small one at that.

“That will be enough now, Mary. You may run along to bed.”

“We will all go to bed,” Ned declared. “Mary, I charge you to lock this door and not let your mistress out again.”

To Christina, it seemed he was avoiding her gaze. Some of his irritation had vanished during this interlude with Mary. If it had not been for his rage, the scene would have had such a domestic quality, as if Ned and she had returned home together after an evening out. If they had been Robert and Louisa, they might have gone up the stairs together to drop in on Robert Edward before seeking each other’s warmth in bed.

But Ned stepped back outside, without so much as a goodnight. “Make sure your mistress stays in her room until morning,” he threw back over his shoulder to Mary. And then he was gone.

Christina went tiredly upstairs to bed. She let Mary help her out of her clothes and tuck her under the covers. She did not know whether to be joyous that she had finally goaded Ned into noticing she was no longer the schoolgirl he thought, or heartsick because the knowledge seemed to mean so little to him.

Chapter Seven

She stayed abed the next morning and only made it down to breakfast at noon. She was listlessly picking over a selection of meats and fish, when Louisa joined her, bearing Robert Edward in her arms.

“There you are, my dear,” she said, examining Christina’s pale complexion with a mildly worried frown. “I hope your headache is not still bothering you.”

“Headache?” With Ned’s kisses so fresh in her mind, Christina had forgotten her excuse of the previous evening. “Oh, yes, headache! No, Louisa, I am quite well thank you. Perhaps a bit worn. That is all.”

“Thank goodness.  Although you must tell me at once if it returns, and I shall call our excellent Doctor Gardiner out to see you.”

“I don’t think that will be necessary.” Grateful for her sister’s solicitude, Christina managed a smile, but was afraid it must appear a trifle wan. “If you had told me a few weeks ago that I could be exhausted by a continuous round of parties, I should not have believed you.”

“We are all a bit weary,” Louisa conceded, as she took a chair across the table. Smiling and cooing at the baby facing her on her lap, she bounced him while they talked. “Perhaps you would rather stay at home this evening. I am certain Robert, at least, would be grateful for the rest. And your own ball will soon be taking place. You must not let yourself become prostrated by so much gaiety.”