A Virtuous Lady (17 page)

Ravensworth stirred. He opened one eye and groaned with the exertion of it. "Go away!" he said weakly. "I can't help you. Can't you see I am near death? Do as you see fit."

Briony's
anger came to a hot boil. She slammed the door shut and for good measure shook the loose door handle till it rattled. When she heard Ravensworth's weak moans, her lips pursed with malevolent pleasure. In high dudgeon, she marched boldly down the stairs, her hair flying in all directions, and went in search of the elusive landlord. When she found him in the kitchen, she told him tartly to find his lordship's coachman and send him to his lordship's private
parlor forthwith. The startled host did not recognize the lady and gaped disbelievingly at the vision with the golden cascade of hair, the sparkling eyes, and the heaving bosom, and wondered to which fortunate gentleman the stunning bit of muslin might belong.

Briony retraced her steps with dignity, beginning to believe that Ravensworth's fears for the safety of an
unchaperoned
lady in a public place were unfounded. Her progress, she believed, had gone quite unremarked. In this, Briony was mistaken.

When she reached the first landing, her way was barred by a foppish gentleman of an age with Ravensworth. He was leaning nonchalantly against the door jamb rearranging the folds of his cravat. Briony hesitated, but when she saw that the gentleman's interest was not fixed on her person, she attempted to pass him with her eyes demurely downcast. "I beg your pardon," she said, waiting patiently for the gentleman to remove himself.

He straightened slowly and gave her a measuring look. "Miss Langland?" he asked in a slow drawl. "Miss Briony Langland, is it not?"

Briony looked questioningly into his eyes but what she read there made her cheeks flame uncomfortably. "I do not know you, sir," she replied, her voice as cool as ice.

"I should be happy to rectify that omission," responded the gentleman smoothly. "We have a mutual acquaintance, I collect."

"Yes?" asked Briony, a trifle out of breath.

The gentleman gave her a knowing smile. "Miss
Harriette
Wilson. I was in her box the other night when you graced it with your presence.
Harriette
did not introduce us—a regrettable oversight. I am Reginald Overton, Earl of Grafton, your devoted servant, ma'am." His voice caressed her.

"Miss Wilson has done me a great service, sir," said Briony stiffly as she tried to edge her way past. There was something
unsavory, something overly bold in the way his eyes swept her figure. Briony cringed.

The gentleman drew nearer and Briony could feel his hateful breath on her cheek. "Damn, but you're a taking little thing," he said huskily, reaching out to stroke her hair. Briony recoiled, but he caught her shoulders and drew her inexorably into his arms.

For a moment she was too surprised, too frightened to resist, but when his hot lips covered hers in a smothering embrace, she threw her head back with a sob. He laughed softly and would have drawn her through the door into what she now recognized as a bedchamber—
his
bedchamber. Sheer panic gave Briony the strength to fight him off. He bent to kiss her again and she bit down hard on his lip. Grafton yelped, but before he had time to recover, Briony brought a high-heeled shoe viciously down on his foot and pushed against his chest with all her might. The gentleman staggered back with an oath and Briony kicked off her shoes and took off up the next short flight of stairs.

She did not hesitate for an instant. She knew instinctively where safety lay and she made for it like a homing pigeon. She passed the door to her own bedchamber and to Avery's room and made straight for Ravensworth. Grafton was hard on her heels. Gasping for breath, she flung Ravensworth's door open and threw herself sobbing with relief into his lordship's arms.

Ravensworth, to say the least of it, was dumbfounded. After Briony had left, her words had slowly penetrated his consciousness and he had been instantly restored to sobriety. He had poured a pitcher of cold water over his head into a basin and was frantically buttoning his shirt when Briony rushed in. His arms clasped the frightened girl firmly to his side. When he looked to the open door, he recognized the Earl framed against it. Grafton took a step into the room, and Briony clung closer to Ravensworth's protecting arms.

The
Marquess's
eyes narrowed as he took in the blood dripping on Grafton's chin and the blood-spattered
neckcloth
. The Earl dabbed at the tear on his lip with his handkerchief and did not mark the dangerous glint in Ravensworth's eyes.

"You did not tell me, Miss Langland," said the Earl in a note of
aggrievement
, "that you were with Ravensworth. We might have come to some arrangement. We might still, with Ravensworth's consent, of course."

Briony was at a loss to understand the Earl's words, but the
Marquess
understood their sinister meaning perfectly. He stood a reluctant Briony away from him over her protests and advanced on the unwary lord. Briony heard the crack but never saw what happened. Ravensworth, breathing hard, was bending over a prostrate and dazed Lord Grafton.

"If you touch the lady again," said Ravensworth in the gentlest tone Briony had ever heard in him, "I shall kill you. If you wish satisfaction, name your weapons, name your seconds."

The sullen Earl threw a look of suppressed fury at his attacker. He sat nursing his jaw. "How was I to know," he asked peevishly, "that the lady was under your protection?"

"Ravensworth," said Briony, a glimmer of understanding beginning to penetrate her brain. "Lord Grafton saw me in company of
Harriette
Wilson. If we explain everything to
him. . ."

"Hush, Briony!" replied Ravensworth testily.

The unsteady Earl got to his knees, then to his feet.

"You owe the lady an apology, Grafton," said Ravensworth with a concealed threat in his voice.

Briony spoke again. "Ravensworth," she said severely, "explain our situation to Lord Grafton."

"Explain what, my love?" asked Ravensworth, looking at her with a curiously blank expression.

Briony frowned at the endearment but chose to ignore it.

Tell him, sir, that my
abigail
travels with us, that we are chaperoned, and that there is no impropriety in our conduct."

"You heard the lady," responded Ravensworth dutifully.

Grafton's sneer was ill concealed. "I apologize, Miss Langland, for my impetuous conduct. I had entirely mistaken the situation." He retreated cautiously to the door. "I beg you will excuse my intrusion, Ravensworth? A natural error in judgment, I think you will agree?"

Ravensworth said nothing. Briony was exasperated at the innuendoes in the conversation. She took a step forward. "Lord Grafton, I beg you will listen to me. We do not travel alone. My companions are—"

"Enough, I said, Briony," roared Ravensworth. Briony was shocked into silence.

When Grafton had gone, Ravensworth shut the door firmly behind him. "Well, madam," he began in a voice of studied gentleness. "I know that you have an excellent reason at hand to explain this last escapade?"

For the first time, Briony became conscious that his lordship was dressed in only his breeches and shirt, and
that
was open to the waist, revealing a thick mat of dark hair curling on his chest. She felt an irresistible urge to reach out and touch it. Briony suppressed the impulse ruthlessly. She was alone with a man in his chamber. She ought to have been terrified out of her wits as she had been with Grafton. Her eyes searched Ravensworth's darkening gaze and she looked down at her hands in agitation, hoping that he had not read what was in her mind. She heard him cough and when she looked up he was donning his black coat, his eyes shuttered.

"He kissed you and you bit him," remarked Ravensworth noncommittally.

"He molested me!" retorted Briony. "It was revolting."

Ravensworth arched an eyebrow. "What? No tingling?" he asked affably as he continued to dress.

Briony shook her head. "Nausea!" she said, shuddering in disgust, remembering the hot mouth glued to hers.

"Now I wonder what that signifies?" asked Ravensworth quizzically as he tied his
neckcloth
in the knot named for him.

"What?" asked Briony, regarding him with frank
curiosity.

Ravensworth's mouth turned down. "Briony, sometimes you are not a very bright girl. Now tell me how it came about."

Briony told him. She waited for his anger to break over her but he only chuckled. "Let that be a lesson to you," he finally said as if he did not mind in the least that she had been subjected to a harrowing experience. "A woman needs to be under the protection of a man who knows how to look after her. If the world knew that you belonged to me, none of this would have happened."

Briony was disappointed in him. Perhaps he still harbored the hope that she would be tempted to accept his odious offer. That pretension she would depress once and for all.

She stood a little straighten "Then I shall marry," she told him with an edge of acid in her voice. "I shall find some Quaker boy—a man of my own background who will respect my principles and cherish my happiness. Yes, a Quaker husband would suit me very well. I should enjoy a freedom that is denied to most women."

"It won't answer," said Ravensworth
dampeningly
, his brows knit together. "There isn't the man living—I don't care if he is a Quaker, a Hindu, or a saint from heaven—who will allow a woman under his care to thwart his authority."

Briony was irritated by his air of masculine superiority. "You don't know Quakers," she said with an air of condescension.

"And you don't know men," retorted Ravensworth bitingly. "Besides, I have told you what your destiny is. Better get used to it." He gave her a wicked grin.

Briony's
lips clamped together. Ravensworth seemed not
to notice. He drew her hand through his arm.

"Shall we join the others?' He opened the door for her and Briony stamped past him.

On the other side of the door they met a startled Avery and Harriet coming from opposite directions. They could not fail to notice that their respective friends had been closeted in Ravensworth's bedchamber. Avery looked away, "but Harriet's mouth gaped open. She stammered an incoherent greeting.

Briony made haste to correct her cousin's mistaken impression. "Harriet," she began nervously, "a most odious gentleman was after me. He mistook me
for . .
.
for
an intimate friend of
Harriette
Wilson." Her voice became even more breathless in the telling of the complex tale. "I ran into Ravensworth's room for safety. He kissed me and tried to drag me into his chamber, but I bit him."

"Not me, you understand," said Ravensworth with an unholy gleam of appreciation in his eye, "but the other gentleman. She forced her way into my chamber uninvited."

"Of course," said Briony, annoyed at Ravensworth's levity. "I went to you for protection."

'That explains everything," said an unrepentant Ravensworth. "Now, shall we take care of the matter which precipitated the whole adventure in the first place?
Something to do with Alice, I collect?"

The conviction grew in
Briony's
mind that Ravensworth was enjoying her predicament. A few well-chosen words on his part would have exonerated her odd behavior, but every sentence that he uttered appeared to give the impression that Briony had invented the mythical gentleman who had pursued her so hotly. She soon gave up the attempt to explain away her presence in Ravensworth's room, for indeed she knew herself to be sadly in the wrong in having remained with him once the threat to her person had been removed.

Harriet had informed her in frigid accents that she and

Avery had been looking for her for a good five minutes and had passed Ravensworth's
closed
door on more than one occasion in their fruitless search. Briony looked to Ravensworth for assistance, but that odious gentleman merely smiled and said nothing, leaving her to bear the burden of the explanations. She dismissed the whole episode as unworthy of comment, and for the rest of the day retreated behind her copy of
Pride and Prejudice,
but her jaundiced eye noted sourly that for some unfathomable reason, his lordship was in high good humor.

Alice's fever was such that the doctor advised against moving her for another day. Briony quaked to hear what Ravensworth might have to say on the further delay, but it seemed that nothing could shake his lordship from his amiable temper. Thus it was that a journey which would have taken two days to complete in normal circumstances was extended to four.