Caprice: The Masqueraders Series - Book One (17 page)

Emory swung round on him, his eyes glittering with anger. “That’s what you think! You think I’m a fool, a buffoon, an ineffectual younger brother. Well, I’ll show you, I’ll show every one of you. Tomorrow I will kill my opponent.”

“And do what?” Hadrian prompted. “Flee to the Continent? How will you live? Don’t think I shall fund your escape.”

Emory’s lower lip began to tremble. “You wouldn’t, would you?” He glanced at his companions, who had been silently looking on. “What did I say?” He swung back to Hadrian, nearly knocking over a lamp in the process. “Dear brother, my benefactor. Truth be known, you’re as cheap as a clipped farthing!”

“God give me patience!”

“God give you gout!” Emory rebutted.

Suddenly the brothers were at each other’s throats, their nearly identical profiles tensed by rage as they struggled against each other’s grip.

“Stop it! Stop it this INSTANT!”

Lady Ramsbury’s shrill cry broke the brothers apart as cleanly as a pistol shot. Pretending to readjust their clothing, the brothers moved to opposite sides of the room to regain self-possession.

“Hades started it,” Emory said sulkily to his mother, “but I suppose I waste my breath. You always take his side.”

“Perhaps if you were ever in the right—” Hadrian began only to be silenced by his mother’s withering glance. He had quite forgotten how very formidable she could be when she so chose. Even his sisters were staring in round-eyed respect at their mama.

“I will not abide savages beneath my roof,” Lady Ramsbury said in a leveling tone. “If I thought for one moment that I had not reared you to behave better than … well, I did!” She took a deep breath, daring any of them to speak. “Now then. Hadrian, dear, and you, darling Emory, shake hands and make up.”

Both men jerked as if they had been prodded in a tender place by a sharp stick.

“If you think I’m—” Emory sputtered.

“I should like to wring his—” Hadrian echoed.

“See here! That’s no way to speak to a mother,” one of Emory’s companions interrupted in a shocked voice. “Damme, if it is!”

“Thank you, Sir Giles,” Lady Ramsbury acknowledged. “I feel a megrim coming, so I shall now retire. If you children must needs quarrel after this, you will do so in the nursery. Such commotion!” She took Thordis’s arm and beckoned Saxona to her side that she might also assist her. “Emory, there will be no duel. You must contrive to send round a note immediately to your opponent. Hadrian, you might help him compose it. I’m certain the misunderstanding can be smoothed over. Good night, gentlemen. Come along, Jane.” With the tender assistance of her three daughters, Lady Ramsbury allowed herself to be led away.

“Now then,” Hadrian began when the doors were closed behind the ladies. “You are Lord Demming’s boy, are you not?” Hadrian inquired of the redhead, who nodded in the affirmative. “Well, Demming, are you prepared to stand as a second for my brother in the morning?”

“Believe so,” Demming answered, puffing out his chest.

“You’ve seen a man take shot before, I suppose? You know how to staunch a wound, tie off a torn artery?”

“I—that is, I …” Demming’s color faded.

“That’s the physician’s part,” the other friend offered smugly and rocked back on his heels.

Hadrian lifted a brow in his direction. “Ah, Sir Giles. You’ve made those provisions, I assume?”

“Not as yet. There’s still time.”

“So it would seem.” He turned his censorious glance lastly on his brother. “I suppose you realize you have two perfectly useless fellows to aid you in your folly. Can you even fire a pistol?”

“ ’Tis none of your damned business!” Emory muttered and picked up a large brandy, which he began gulping.

Hadrian walked over and snatched it from him. “Cease that this instant, or you’ll be fit for nothing more than providing a rather large and sodden target for your opponent.”

“I didn’t ask for your help, and I don’t want it!” Emory knocked the glass from his brother’s hand. The amber liquid splashed a brocade chair as the crystal tumbler fell with a thump onto the thick Flemish carpet.

“A commendable performance, Emory.” Hadrian’s frigid tone made Demming and Sir Giles backpedal a few steps though his brother could only sway with indignant rage.

“I’ll show you!” Emory swung at his brother, the punch going widely afield.

A smile of purest satisfaction appeared on Hadrian’s bruised mouth. It was the provocation he had been waiting for. He balled his fist into a ruthless weapon and clipped his brother neatly under the chin. The blow levered Emory’s head back at a painful angle, and then he slipped gracefully toward the floor. Hadrian caught him just before his head touched the carpet.

“Damn fool!” he muttered as he cradled his unconscious brother more tenderly than might have been expected under the circumstances. Emory would not thank him for what he had done, but he would be alive. There was no time to explain how terrified he was for his brother, or that he was certain Tibbitts had hired a professional to kill Emory, either by greater prowess or, if necessary, treachery. Puffed up by injured pride, Emory would, doubtless, have continued with this ill-advised enterprise.

“Now then, gentlemen,” Hadrian said from his place on the carpet beside his brother. “You are going to tell me exactly and succinctly what led to the challenge. Then you are going to stand guard over my brother and keep him housebound until I have achieved the goal of extracting him from this debacle. Demming, begin.”

Less than a week after their last altercation, the Blackburne brothers once again stood toe to toe in the family salon.

“You had no right!”

“You will you hear me out! The man was a professional shot. He had been hired to murder you!”

Emory’s smirk of disbelief made Hadrian want to slap his face. But, determined that they would not again resort to blows, he backed up a pace. “I found your opponent at the Drake and Boar after your friends gave me his direction.”

“Some friends!” Emory scoffed. “I’ve cut ’em dead.”

“They saved your life. It was by the merest chance, and your great good fortune, I recognized the man. The fop who insulted you was no gentleman. He was a professional duelist. If you kept up with serious matters, you might have recognized him yourself. A flyer was recently circulated about him. His name is Jack Hawkins. While I detained him, the tavern owner’s daughter fetched the night watch, who arrested him.”

“That does not answer for the humiliation you caused me!”

“What do you suppose your friends would have thought had they learned that you had challenged a criminal? I could not very well accuse him in court of a crime he had yet to commit, but when I offered him money for gin, he freely admitted that he was hired to murder you. To scotch rumor, I accompanied the soldiers who took him to Devonshire, where he will stand trial for other crimes. If you care to know it, he has already murdered two other men.”

Emory shrugged off the knowledge, but his brother’s tale of intended mayhem affected him. He had been frightened to death of dueling, but a gentleman could not ignore a direct insult and still hold his head up in his club. After the stranger stopped him and his friends on the street to call Hadrian a yellow dog and imply that he was a pup from the same blighted litter, he could not do other than call the man out. He had even been prepared to take a ball in the arm. But death? He shook his head. “Who would hire him? I have no enemies.”

Hadrian met his brother’s doubtful gaze. “I do.” He touched the bruise just below his left eye. “I’ve met Tibbitts’s hirelings before.”

His expression stricken, Emory’s gaze slid away from his brother’s.

Hadrian was satisfied that he had, at last, made his point. “Why should Tibbitts think he can get away with this? Emory, what is it I don’t know?”

“Not every man has your wealth, or luck,” Emory muttered. “Tibbitts occasionally carried debts for several mutual friends.”

Hadrian’s expression was a revelation of surprise. “Damme! No wonder Bascombe was beside himself.”

“What do you mean?” Emory demanded, his pale face tensing again.

Hadrian pushed both hands through his hair and then dropped into a chair. It had been a long and wearying two days because he had ridden back from Devonshire without pausing for rest. And not one single thing had gone as he had planned. Closing his aching eyes, he leaned his head against the chairback. “I ran into Cousin James coming out of Lansdowne House as I passed. He told me certain gentlemen were unhappy to see Tibbitts go down. He hinted at friendships strained by the association, but the names he mentioned were those of inveterate gamblers.”

Emory threw his arms wide. “ ’Pon oath! May a man not indulge his luck without looking to his back for fear of scandalmongers?”

This impassioned speech caused Hadrian to open his eyes. “Have you been frequenting hells?”

“What of it?” Emory challenged but he just missed meeting his brother’s stare.

“You were with pockets to let at the beginning of the month. What has changed?”

“I won a bet at Newmarket.”

“With what ready?”

“If you must know, a marker,” Emory answered hotly. “After all, I come into my majority this week. It’s good.”

Hadrian sat forward slowly, his voice lower and softer than at any time during their conversation. “If I thought that you’d been obliging a moneylender in order to maintain yourself, I’d take a whip to you.”

This time Emory did not lose his temper, for there was something flatly dreadful in the silver-green gaze boring into him. A nervous laugh escaped before he could swallow it. “I say, Hades, you
are
blue-deviled. Maybe you should find yourself a new ladybird. The company of a beautiful woman can do wonders for a man’s spirits. I should know. ’Pon oath! I may even forgive you for that business about Helene.”

“Why should you do that?” Hadrian inquired in passing interest.

The tension drained from Emory at the success of his ploy in turning his brother’s attention from his monetary problems. A smile spread quickly across his face. “I’ve found someone. Been paying my addresses to Princess Soltana. Ain’t she a wonder?”

“Careful, Emory, you’re drooling upon your neckcloth.” The caustic tone was one Hadrian often employed to prick a man in his most vulnerable spot. It did not betray the sudden jealous fury that had flared beneath his glacial calm.

Nevertheless, Emory gloated. “You are amazed that she finds me to her taste because you persist in finding a dozen different elements lacking in my character.”

Hadrian’s dark brows arched high. “Dear boy, you cannot think yourself smitten with that lovely impostor?”

“Can’t I?” Emory crossed his arms and cocked his leg at an angle which displayed the fine manly limb. “Princess Soltana is going to marry me.”

Hadrian’s voice was silk over water. “She has said as much?”

“She is a lady,” Emory answered indignantly. “Ladies do not profess their feelings like common strumpets.”

“One would consider that at your age, strumpets would be more in your line. You can distinguish nothing of the finer feelings when lust rules your brain. Bed a few light-skirts, brother, then talk to me of love.”

“I should have expected as much from you,” Emory scoffed. “You may know a great deal about a great many things, but you can tell me nothing about love. I heard how you put Helene out on the street at three
A.M
. because she had annoyed you. She confessed the entire matter to Lord Rawson. You are heartless, Hadrian, cold as ice. Buy yourself another harlot, but don’t pretend to lecture me on the finer feelings!”

Like lava flowing under a polar cap, Hadrian’s white-hot jealousy shifted, setting off tremors deep within him. “I’ve lived thirty years. Though you may not credit it, I have recently thought to cast about for a bride, myself,” he lied smoothly.

Emory stared, mouth agape, at his older brother. “You’re thinking of marriage? Who’s the lucky lady?”

“Haven’t chosen,” Hadrian rapped out but it gave him a segue into a discussion on the subject. “Marriage is a serious matter. There are certain criteria which must be met on both sides. Suitability, background, connections, fortune. You know none of these things about Princess Soltana. Does that not strike you as odd?”

“It strikes me that you’ve just proved what I said before. You’ve a clockworks for a heart. Marriage without affection means nothing to me.”

“How do know she’s to be trusted, Emory?”

This time Emory crowed with laughter. “That’s a fine thing. The lady must be suspect because she has fixed an interest in me. Well, I don’t care what you think. In fact, I’m glad you don’t find her to your taste. In any case, the choice was to be mine if we should again chance to develop an interest in the same lady.”

“We were speaking then of mistresses.”

Emory sneered. “
You
were speaking of mistresses. I shall pursue Princess Soltana, whatever objection you make.”

Hadrian took a careful breath. The ice-bound rage was thawing fast. In another moment he would be at his brother’s throat.

The difficulty of a problem had never before deterred him from reaching a solution quickly and with clear insight. Yet the coil which had become his life had more kinks in it than Daedalus’s maze. He had neglected his duty to Colonel Selwyn by leaving London. It had been a necessary desertion to keep his cloth-headed brother from being shot, but it did not help endear Emory to him. If only Soltana had accepted his call he would now know what to think. He had gone to her in his travel dust, expecting that she would gladly receive him. The Arbuthnott butler’s stony reply that she was “otherwise engaged” now took on new meaning.

He eyed his brother, studying the handsome unscarred face, and the ice shattered. “I’m going to bed!” he announced abruptly and left the room.

Emory remained motionless until he heard Hadrian’s footfalls on the stairs, then he reached into his pocket and took out the note that had been delivered just before his brother’s return.

He scanned the lines again and cursed. There was nothing for it. He must go out. If Hadrian ever found out …

“He won’t!” Emory muttered. This time there would be no informed companions to speak out of turn and upset his mother. He would handle the matter himself.

Princess Soltana sat with Lady Everleigh, who was holding forth on her experiences with a very nasty case of gout, yet Clarissa’s gaze kept straying to the doorway, as it had all evening long. Nearly two weeks had passed since the night she had been at Vauxhall, yet not once in that time had she seen Lord Ramsbury.

The morning after the masquerade, she had received a very unusual bouquet from the earl, and she had found its floral “message” a heady mixture of flattery and promise.

As every student of the
Language of Flowers
knew, delicate clusters of Amethysts symbolized Admiration while the white Bellflowers denoted Gratitude. Pungent Sweet William stood for Gallantry, and tufts of Lint embodied Obligations Felt. The voluptuous Musk Roses were for Beauty’s Caprice. Scroll-tipped Ferns represented Fascination, branches of Peachblossom the Captivated Heart. Zephyrs were for Expectations, while the presence of the Royal Osmunda Fern expressed the sender’s Hopes and Dreams. The overflowing basket had contained a veritable encyclopedia of emotion. Yet only a single letter had been scrawled in bold script on the enclosed card:
“R”

A young lady might read much, or nothing, in the gesture, though Lord Ramsbury did not seem the sort of man to make grand displays easily. Yet there had been no sight or other sign from him since. It was as if he had disappeared. If not for the word of the ever-present Mr. Emory Blackburne, she would have suspected that Lord Ramsbury had left town.

A hundred times she had relived every second of their tryst in Lovers’ Walk until the memory of his touch, his taste, his tenderness, and urgent desire had blended together in her mind to become an undeniable and insistent ache. Then, just this morning, she had awakened with an understanding of the cause. It was ridiculously simple, and quite, quite futile.

She was in love with Lord Ramsbury.

In the face of this, his continued absence seemed nothing short of a sobering and lowering lesson in the price of folly.

Miserable and bewildered, Clarissa began absently twisting the heavy ring on the finger of her right hand. It was a huge cushion-shaped emerald in an ornate setting popular half a century earlier. It was part of the Arbuthnott family jewels. Her aunt had insisted that she wear it because in the weeks since Bonaparte’s defeat, the English aristocracy had begun celebrating with showy displays of brooches and bracelets, rings and tiaras, many of which had not been seen in public since the days of the French Revolution. Yet the glorious emerald made her uncomfortable. Apart from the sign to others that the viscountess now considered Princess Soltana “part of the family,” the craze for wearing expensive jewels had been marred by an increased number of thefts.

Though she felt burdened with the extravagant jewel, she did not look nearly as startling as the lady to whom she was giving her halfhearted attention. Lady Everleigh wore a double loop of pearls collared about her throat, each of which was a thumbnail in diameter. From it hung a huge yellow diamond lavaliere.

“Such lovely pearls,” Clarissa murmured when the lady ended her litany on prescriptions for gout.

Lady Everleigh smiled coyly. “How
kind
of you to notice, my dear. It’s nothing,
really.
A mere
bauble
from Sir Pervis.”

Clarissa eyed with reservation the jeweled pendant hanging above the woman’s cleavage, which the lady kept drawing attention to by frequent little pats which made her bosom jiggle. Nor did she approve of the way the lady insisted upon punctuating her speech with an unnecessary emphasis on one word in each sentence.

“You will be
fortunate
indeed to marry the likes of Sir Pervis,” the lady continued. “He thinks
nothing
of my many bills. But
nothing
!” She held out a dimpled wrist, saying, “The bracelet and ring were purchased at
Tessier’s.”
Her pretty round face lit up. “Do you
know
what Monsieur Tessier said? These were once the
personal
jewels of that
notorious
DuBarry person. He was absolutely
insistent
that I was the only lady who could carry them off in the style they deserved.”

Her smug expression implied that when she donned the jewels, the alluring reputation of their previous owner also attached itself to her person. Clarissa saw little to confirm this. Nor, evidently, did the gentlemen who, strangely enough, had deserted Soltana’s side the moment she engaged Lady Everleigh in conversation. The lady’s sweet expression and plump figure could not outweigh her incessant, inane chatter.

A moment later, Heloise swept past her niece and with a minimum of effort disengaged her from the lady.

“What a queer person,” Clarissa remarked when out of earshot.

“Trade!” Heloise whispered, as though it explained everything. “Sir Pervis’s
mésalliance.
Seventy years old and a widower three times, and he weds a girl whose father made his fortune in Newcastle coal.”

“Auntie, you’re a snob!” Clarissa responded in amusement.

“Nothing of the kind. I simply maintain that those who would enter the upper classes should cease to remind us and themselves of the fact once they’ve done so. That
parure
is quite
malapprise
at a soiree. A lady would have worn the collar
sans
the offending rock!
Alors,
it draws undo attention to her false bosoms.”