A Virtuous Lady (34 page)

As she moved at a leisurely pace along the gallery to take Ravensworth's arm, she became aware that the silk of her skirt was clinging tenaciously to the outline of her legs in a most unladylike fashion. She pulled at it unobtrusively to no avail. Ravensworth's keen eye swept over her, missing nothing, but his whispered comment, when it came, was crushing.

"Where is the rest of your dress?"

Briony looked into his scorching glance and found that she could not keep a straight face. "How like you! You hypocritical reprobate! The day that you tell me I look charming, I'll know for a certainty that I look like a nun! Now stop frowning at me and say something pleasant for a change. What do you think of my hair?"

"It's different. Have the pins fallen out? It looks to me as if it is coming undone."

"Nonsense," said Harriet in a matter-of-fact tone. "It's all the rage. I'll wager Briony's dresser took hours to tease those wayward locks into this tantalizing disarray. You look ravishing, Briony."

Ravensworth
forbore
public comment, but as the four began their slow descent of the grand staircase, he inclined his head toward Briony and said in a soft undertone, "If you don't do something about that dashed skirt, that's exactly what you'll be—ravished. Every baronet, viscount, and earl is shamelessly ogling you."

"Not to mention marquess," Briony interposed smoothly, smiling with disarming coquetry into her husband's grim face.

"Look at Grafton," Ravensworth went on with rising ire as he spied the offending Earl. Lady Adele, attired with habitual flamboyance verging on the vulgar, was hanging on his sleeve. "What the devil does he think he's about, gaping at my wife in that moonstruck fashion? It's that dress, of course. I shouldn't blame
him!
It's meant to heat the temperature of any red-blooded male to boiling point!"

Briony laughed. "Don't be nonsensical. I am the plainest-attired lady in this entire assembly! Not a person here sees in this unremarkable getup whatever it is that you think you see!"

Ravensworth answered her fiercely. "Don't gammon me!
As
if you didn't know! It's that damned dewy innocence which you project so convincingly which that—neckline and—oh, the sum of all the different parts give the lie to. Why you look like —like . . ." Here his lordship paused to find the right words of condemnation.

"Like a common harlot displaying her wares in a house of debauchery?" finished Briony, a polemic gleam kindling in her eye.

Ravensworth froze and his knuckles showed white against the
bannister
. "Briony, where did you hear those words?" he asked, the color draining from his face. "Was it Grafton?"

"I have my sources," replied his lady with cryptic evasiveness.

"I can explain everything," Ravensworth exclaimed. "It's not as black as it seems. I beg of you, Briony . . ."

"Pray, don't put yourself to the trouble," returned Briony, suppressing an urge to giggle. "You warned me how it would be when you went up to town." At this she turned a luminous look of reproach upon the stricken lord.

"But I
didn't;
I
couldn't;
Briony, you know I
wouldn't!
I am
innocent,"
he ended on a note of desperation.

His Marchioness gave a slight shrug of her shoulders. "So say you," she intoned with pitiless unconcern for his protestations of innocence.

Ravensworth would have said more, but the orchestra began the first bars of the opening waltz and he was obliged to change partners with Avery. As he led Harriet out to the middle of the great hall to open the ball with the guest of honor as custom and precedence decreed, he bent a look of acute supplication on his Marchioness, who gave nary a sign that she understood his eloquent entreaty, and the portraits of long-forgotten
Montgomerys
on the oak-paneled walls smiled down stiff-lipped and unblinking at his misery.

It was a grand ball, the most spectacular gala event that had been seen in the district in living memory. Every neighbor for miles around had been invited, swelling the number of residents at the house to more than twofold. A marquee had been set up on the south lawn to accommodate the guests for supper and many were drifting away from the great hall to avail themselves of the culinary delights of the French chef whom Briony had especially imported from London for the occasion.

Briony was in high alt. She had basked unashamedly in the flagrant compliments which had come her way. She was an original; one of a kind; she was a great gun and Ravensworth a lucky man to have attached the Incomparable Miss Langland. And she had savored the dark, smoldering glances which Ravensworth had directed at her as she had danced the night away in the arms of every man but him. She had brought him to the point of surrender, she was sure of
it,
and at the thought, a ridiculous smile of anticipation played about her lips.

Avoiding the unwelcome attentions of Lord Grafton, who had been blatantly pursuing her all evening, Briony threaded her way resolutely through the crush of dancers to the east wing, making her way to the downstairs library, only a stone's throw from the noisy throng in the great
hall.
She cast a lingering look over her shoulder and her eyes briefly met those of the ever-watchful Ravensworth, whose attention was almost immediately claimed by the persistent Adele. Briony saucily tossed her head and surreptitiously snatched a glass of champagne from the tray borne aloft by one of the innumerable lackeys who waited on her guests with unabated good humor. A gala evening in the servants' quarters was planned for the following evening, by which time, it was to be hoped,
many
of her ladyship's guests would have departed for greener pastures.

She heard the faint strains of the orchestra as it struck up for the second waltz of the evening—"a wicked waltz," as Nanny would say—and Briony smiled reminiscently as she recalled the ball at
Broomhill
House, so long ago, when she had first met the darkly handsome, hot-at-hand
Marquess
of Ravensworth. Well, she had learned the trick of managing him, she thought sagely.

She plumped down on the settee flanking the fireplace and took one sip of champagne before laying aside her glass. From her reticule, she withdrew a small mother-of-pearl snuffbox, a gift from Harriet. The practiced flick of her left wrist was meant to open the lid in one easy motion, but by some mishap the object in Briony's hand fell to the new
Aubusson
carpet and rolled under the massive oak library table which stood against the window.

Briony dropped to her knees and crawled under the table, groping with arm outstretched to retrieve it. She found it hard against the
wainscotting
and sat down, knees drawn up, to complete her favorite ritual, but before she could begin, she heard the door open and a masculine tread came striding into the room.

A pair of white silk stockings encased in black patent shoes stopped directly in front of Briony. She hesitated only fractionally then reached forward to mischievously pinch the elegant calf so invitingly displayed to her view. In a moment, a laughing Briony was hauled from her hiding place by two strong, masculine arms and she was caught in a crushing embrace.

At the first clear glimpse of her captor, Briony groaned, "Oh no! No! No!"

"Yes! Yes! Yes!" The Earl of Grafton, bleary-eyed and somewhat the worse for wear from
champagne,
bent his head to ravage Briony's lips.

"Well, well, well! What have we here?" My Lord Ravensworth, leaning with indolent grace against the closed door of the library, arms languidly crossed over his broad chest, surveyed the dramatic action with a sardonic eye.

"Do you know, my dear," he addressed Briony, "I have the strangest feeling of
deja
vu?"

"
Broomhill
House," offered Briony helpfully as she disengaged herself from Grafton's ardent embrace. In one hand she still clutched the mother-of-pearl snuffbox. Without a flicker of embarrassment, she deftly opened the lid and withdrew the smallest pinch of snuff and put it delicately to her nostrils. "Delightful," she said as she exhaled.

"I was thinking of
our.
. .
honeymoon cottage," mused Ravensworth aloud, frustrating her deliberate attempt to throw him off stride.

"I've been meaning to talk to you about that," said Briony prosaically as she brushed past the Earl of Grafton as if he had been a statue carved in marble. "I've had it done up, you know—the cottage, I mean—new roof, new furnishings, new bed." Her eyes flickered to Ravensworth and flicked away again. "Thing is, your man of business came to see me earlier this evening. I have overextended myself, Ravensworth— the ball and everything else, you understand. You, um, couldn't let me have a little something on account? I'll gladly pay you back out of my next quarterly interest."

Much to Grafton's amazement, my Lord Ravensworth smiled fondly at his wife. "My dear, on your lips, there are no other words I'd rather hear—almost. But I fear we are embarrassing Grafton here with our domestic chatter."

The Earl, recalled to a sense of his jeopardy, began to mumble a disjointed apology but Ravensworth held up a restraining hand. "No need to apologize, old chap, I assure you. It happens all the time. You don't mind my asking, but you're not a Quaker by any chance? No, no, I didn't think you were. Not that
that
signifies in the least! Put it down to idle curiosity. No need to name seconds or anything of that sort. I trust you don't think I'm shirking my duty as a man of honor, but such niceties don't weigh with her ladyship, you see.

"No, no! You haven't taken advantage of my hospitality. I won't hear of such a thing! Lady Ravensworth tumbles into these little scrapes all the time, don't you dear?"

He opened the library door and stepped back a pace. "I'd be most obliged to you if you would grant me a small favor. Lady Adele is waiting for me in the yellow saloon off the main drawing room in the west wing. Would you be so kind
as to convey my apologies to her? Just tell her I am otherwise engaged. What? Oh, nothing drastic. I'm merely going to box my wife's pretty little ears." He spoke with such imperturbable affability that Lord Grafton was sure he had misunderstood the last remark. He retreated through the open door with much bowing and scraping and offers of abject apologies until Ravensworth was constrained to say, "Yes! Yes! We understand. Just go!" And with a helpful hand on the shoulder, he propelled the befuddled Earl backward into the hall and promptly shut the door in his face. He thereupon locked it, and pocketed the key.

"What about our honeymoon cottage?" asked Ravensworth, striving without much success to repress the look of triumph flashing from his
eyes.
"Whom do you intend it for?'

Briony self-consciously fingered the pearl drop at first one ear and then the other. "Whom do you think?" she prevaricated.

He gave her a slow "a la Ravensworth" smile. "What a remarkable woman you are. Who would have believed that you would have such foresight? You were very sure of yourself, were you not, Briony?"

"Very!"

"You knew that I would return?"

"Of course."

"And you had the cottage made ready so that we might be together?"

"That goes without saying."

"But my dear, it really wasn't necessary."

Ravensworth advanced toward her, and Briony, reading his intent, evaded his grasp and swiftly ranged herself behind the back of the sofa.

"I take leave to remind you that there are still no drapes on the windows," she reproved in quelling accents.

"As though I care a fig for that," Ravensworth rapped out, and vaulted the obstacle which barred him from his quarry.

In one easy movement, he encircled Briony's waist and pulled her roughly against him.

As he bent to kiss her, she twisted her head to the side and gasped, "Before we resume our relationship, Ravensworth, I think we should come to an understanding."

His hands roamed possessively, caressingly down the length of her. "I agree," he concurred, his warm lips tantalizingly coaxing her mouth open.
"Unconditional surrender on both sides."

'That sounds reasonable," managed Briony before she was adroitly tumbled to the floor in a bear hug. After several minutes of pleasurable lovemaking, she finally mused, "I thought you were going to explain about that den of iniquity."

Ravensworth's head came up. "What would you say, my love, if I said that I shall forget about all the explanations
you
have to make if you forget about all the explanations I have to make?"

"
Mmm
.
That sounds reasonable," moaned Briony as Ravensworth's hands touched a sensitive spot.

"Tingling?" he asked at length.

"What do you think?" she sighed hoarsely as her impatient fingers worked to undo his "a la Briony"
neckcloth
. She slipped her warm hands into his open shirt to stroke the soft mat of hair curling on his chest.