A Terrible Beauty (Season of the Furies Book 1) (3 page)

Bennet and his friends had laughed when she’d mocked him from the cut of his coat to his dancing skills. Drew had been devastated – as she’d intended. He was all that was kind and caring. That was his problem. He’d seen too much and if she didn’t succeed in keeping him away from her, there was no telling what the Baron would do to either of them. After Drew left the ball Araby had never felt more miserable, or more heartless. Whether or not she succeeded with Iredale, she’d never forget the cost of that night and the look of betrayal on Drew’s face.

Katherine’s voice returned her to the business at hand. “Remember, you mustn’t be hurt if Araby and I don’t acknowledge you much after tonight. We have our own consequence to consider, after all.” Katherine examined each of her fingernails, buffed to perfection as always. “We have decided to continue lending you our support – quietly, of course. You shall became a moderate success, I should think.” Araby and Sarah looked at each other and shook their heads. Katherine could be so very condescending. It was what she’d been bred to be, even though it ran very contrary to her true nature. Katherine’s mother could frighten the devil himself into blind obedience.

“Never mind,” Sarah hugged Lucinda briefly. “I shall always acknowledge you. We’ll have that nasty Edmond Bennet begging you for a dance before the week is out,” she declared.

“I don’t know how to thank you all,” Lucinda said in her warm, southern drawl. Tears of gratitude filled her eyes. “You’ve been so good to me and I’m...I’m just, well...nobody.”

Araby stepped forward. She thought of the lessons she’d learned at her nurse, Gertie’s, knee – The Golden Rule. Everyone mattered and how you treated them, regardless of their rank defined you as a person. She remembered Drew’s pale face last night. She’d certainly defined herself clearly enough during the past two years, hadn’t she – sniping at girls she considered to be any challenge to her role as the Incomparable, humiliating those who weren’t if she could make herself look clever in the process. She’d helped execute the ruination of a girl of good family and betrayed an astute young man whose only sin was to offer her compassion and kindness. “You’re not a nobody, Lucinda,” she said softly.

“Yes, she is,” Katherine replied matter-of-factly. “She has no connections other than Lady Bramwell and those are tenuous at best.” She looked at the three of them as if she were merely explaining an examination question they’d all gotten wrong. In Katherine’s mind she was and she nodded for emphasis. “Lucinda really is a complete nobody.” There was a slight pause and then the other three girls burst into laughter much to Katherine’s confusion.

***

Michael lounged against a pillar at the back of the Grantham’s salon. The cut of coats might alter, the lines of dresses change, but the affectations and the petty intrigues remained the same. Only the cast of characters differed. Their hostess’ decor however, was a rather inventive recreation of Greek Revival. Unfortunately, it had lost a great deal in her particular interpretation. The friezes on the walls were trite, the work of a skilled painter, but not a singular artist. They were laden with sentimentality, but light in any true artistic depth. He buried a sigh as he continued to watch the audience. Musical evenings were located at the third level of Hell right beside country dances. Michael continued searching for his quarry. She was the real reason for his attendance tonight. He meant to see that she kept her claws sheathed around his brother permanently. Ah, there in the third row. Diamond and gold hair pins glinted amid her thick locks of dark hair. Few people could carry off yellow, he admitted, but she could. No vapid lemon-colored silks for this girl, though. The shade of her gown made her look as though she’d draped herself in the very glow of the sun itself.

More than half the eligible men of the ton carried a torch for her from what he gathered, Drew included. She held little appeal for Michael, though. He liked bedding women – hot blooded ones who knew what their bodies were for and enjoyed using them. Lady Arabella Winston though undeniably beautiful, was a doll all trussed up in splendid gowns and artifice. She toyed with society as if it were a shiny bauble created strictly for her own amusement. There were always one or two of them in every year’s crop of debutantes who were more calculating and ruthless than the others. This year there were three.

The Furies, they called them. He eyed them sitting together in a row, one pale, blonde, one with rich, reddish-brown curls and the last with hair the color of a raven’s wing. They were three uncommonly lovely girls, he’d give them that. One day, after they’d grown disenchanted with their advantageous marriages, he might enjoy sampling them in his bed. The dark one, Araby, would be first. Young Andrew had very good taste.

After he'd finished interrogating his mother about the Araby chit, Michael had taken Drew around to his sport club and then on to Tattersall's to view one of the auctions. Opportunities to spend time with his younger brother were far fewer than Michael liked, but between business meetings and the renovations to his new townhouse his life was more a series of obligations than preferences.

Michael's relationship with the rest of his family had never been particularly close. Since he'd returned to England successful, but still very much the prodigal son, he'd made peace with his eldest brother Henry, even starting a rudimentary friendship with the man. Not easy to do, given their parents’ mutual dislike of their middle son. It was one of the few things they’d agreed upon during their marriage. Once Henry and his wife returned from their tour of Italy Michael fully intended to continue building his friendship with his eldest sibling.

The audience gave a round of polite applause signaling the end of an uninspiring, even dreary performance. Michael adjusted his position so that Lady Arabella would pass him as she made her exit. She moved gracefully, her head held high by her long, slender neck. It was a neck meant for collecting a string of slow, sensual kisses from earlobe to collarbone and damned if Michael didn't feel a tug of envy for the man lucky enough to give them. Her smile dazzled the beholder, but he noticed as she moved closer to him that it did nothing to warm her lovely, cognac-colored eyes. Cold and calculating. Oh, he had her number all right. She turned and addressed one of her friends.

“That was truly ghastly. If she’s an accomplished musician, I’m Chopin. A Hereford steer would have better command of a violin than she does and a lighter touch. There were times I wanted to knock the instrument right out of her hands – excuse me, hooves.”

Her friend’s laughed appreciatively. Michael agreed with her assessment of the young lady’s musical talent, but the girl in question was also their host’s daughter and Lady Arabella had made no attempt to lower the sound of her voice. Two young men began whispering to each other and likewise made little attempt to hide their amusement.

“No wonder her skirts are so ridiculously full,” remarked the slender blonde on her left. “they’re designed to hide her bovine lineage.”

The other girl’s remark was not only bad form, it was also callus. By tomorrow half the younger set would be openly mocking Miss Susannah Grantham. Michael abruptly stepped in front of the girls.

“Good evening...ladies,” he said, pausing long enough before the last word to make his inference about their lack of manners clear. Only the little auburn-haired chit had the grace to look embarrassed. He surveyed Arabella Winston with a narrowed gaze, putting enough assessment in it to discomfort her. She was tall for a female, but not nearly as tall as he. Somehow, though, she still managed to look down her nose at him. She brushed past him without a word and the other girls followed her lead. Well, well, well, she was an audacious little brat and in desperate need of a lesson in behavior.

Conversation and laughter flowed by him as he made his loop around the ballroom. Then Michael heard a rich, silvery, trill of laughter and knew instinctively to whom it belonged. As if she sensed his presence, Araby Winston turned towards him as he strolled by. He kept moving, watching her just long enough to know that her eyes followed him. Excellent, he thought, let the game begin.

He already had her measure. Despite Drew’s refusal to see the reality of the situation, Michael knew, as did everyone else, she had no interest in a third son. She wanted money and a title. Had Araby Winston truly cared for his brother, Michael would happily settle a considerable amount of funds on them upon their marriage. However, she clearly was not the sort of girl to care about anyone but herself.

Michael suffered through his own season of reckoning, as he’d come to call it. His heart, long since hardened against the foibles of that overused expression, love, had eventually recovered. He put passion and lust in their proper places now and disregarded any female pretensions to finer feelings. Drew would learn as well. Michael now had a fortune large enough to entice even the strictest marriage-seeking mamas and their perfectly turned-out daughters, but Drew did not.

Michael followed his quarry with his eyes. She glanced back at him and then spoke to one of her companions from behind her fan. His smile broadened into a grin. Later during the dancing he’d partner Arabella Winston whether she liked it or not and he would teach her the true meaning of the term, ‘setdown.’

***

“That’s Michael Lassiter, the Earl of Stowebridge’s younger brother and older brother to Andrew,” Katherine said from behind the discretion of her fan. “He’s lately returned to London. He doesn’t attend many events, so his presence here tonight is quite a social coup for Lady Grantham,”

Araby glanced back at the man wearing impeccably tailored evening dress. When he’d stood in front of them moments ago she couldn’t help but admire the look of him. He was a tall, broad–shouldered man whose handsome features clearly enjoyed the warmth of the sun. His eyes  by contrast, were a cool, clear gray – more the color of a richly silvered mirror, than plain pewter. She fancied they’d be equally quick to display humor, or rage and something told her that she should avoid drawing his anger. A rush of excitement passed through her. Drawing his passion, well, that might be another thing entirely.

“He’s very handsome,” she murmured.

“Yes. Rich too,” Katherine stated. “Unfortunately, he wouldn’t suit as a prospect. For one thing, he’s too...experienced for you, and therefore harder to manage. For another, he has an unsavory past. And there’s the lack of title, of course.”

Araby risked another glance over her shoulder. Michael Lassiter caught her gaze, snared it for a moment, then tipped his head ever so slightly in her direction. She turned her head sharply away from him, lifting one of her eyebrows in condescension. Her expression did nothing to halt the flutter in her stomach, nor the quickening of her heart.

“What's so unsavory about him?” Her eyes quickly swept the ballroom. Judging from the deep sighs and longing glances directed his way, most ladies found him quite savory indeed.

Sarah leaned forward to answer, her whisper laced with equal parts dread and glee. “He was a pirate in the far east. They say that’s how he gained his fortune – one built upon blood and death!” Sarah had a penchant for melodrama.

“That and a successful investment strategy,” Katherine commented drily. “His family sent him away in disgrace when Drew was just a boy. I believe it involved a rather tawdry affair with some peer’s wife – I don’t remember whom. The old earl supposedly sent Mr. Lassiter to oversee some business concerns in Siam, but everyone knew he’d been banished from the family and that his father had turned him into nothing more than a remittance man.”

Araby fought her desire to take another look at Michael Lassiter. Few banished men returned to England at all and certainly never before they were old and gray. That Michael Lassiter had managed to not only return to society, but to amass a fortune of his own while enduring such ignominy spoke of the man’s strength of will if not his character.

“Apparently, he took exception to his father’s decree and returned after the old earl's death,” Katherine continued. “He is self-made, however he chose to do it. He also has a reputation for success among women of a certain persuasion.”

“Infamy is more like it,” Sarah chimed in, warming to the subject.

Araby feared her other friend had an unhealthy curiosity about the demimonde. “How is it that you two know so much? Drew has never even mentioned his brother to me.”

Katherine sniffed disdainfully. “I'm not surprised. As I’ve said before, Drew lives entirely too much in his mother’s pockets. Rumor has it that the dowager countess has never forgiven her middle son for causing a scandal that forced her to withdraw from London for an entire year.”

“Besides,” Sarah interjected, “Lady Stowebridge tells anyone who’ll listen that he’s always been completely immoral and thoroughly despises his own family, though no one has seen any evidence to support that claim. Lady Fiona, the current countess, practically salivates when anyone mentions her older brother-in-law,” she concluded gleefully.

Katherine gave their friend a quelling glance before resuming her lecture on the subject of Michael Lassiter. “It’s all rather distasteful according to Mama. That’s why you haven’t heard about him. Our mothers attend various events where younger ladies aren’t present and the gossip flows more freely. Your mother left town this Season so....” Katherine’s voice trailed off. She squeezed Araby’s arm in apology for her careless words and gave her friend a small, comforting smile.