Educating Caroline (24 page)

She waved the note until the ink dried, and then she folded it, and placed it on Bennington’s salver. “That will be all, Bennington,” she said. “Thank you.”

The butler bowed, and left the room. He was careful, after he’d closed the door, to lock it again behind him.

“That letter,” Emily burst out, “is from Braden Granville, isn’t it?”

Caroline shushed her. “Must you shout so?” she asked. “I tell you, Ma has ears like a cat. She’ll find out Bennington let you in here, and there won’t be a minute’s peace after that.”

“It
is
from him.” Emily rushed to Caroline’s side. “Let me see it.”

Knowing Emily would never let her alone until she did so, Caroline surrendered the note. Emily read it with an expression that grew more indignant with every line.

“Of all the conceited—” She practically threw the note back at Caroline. “I can’t believe the gall of that man! First he sticks his tongue in your mouth, then he puts his hand down your shimmy, and then
this!”

“Yes,” Caroline said. She knew it was wicked, but she could not help feeling extremely pleased. She had never in her life had a man threaten—in writing, no less—to force his way into a building and drag her anywhere. There was something extremely thrilling about it. Especially considering the fact that the man in question was Braden Granville.

“It’s barbaric,” Emily said. “He’s ordering you about as if you were some sort of . . . slave! This is a classic example of a domineering male thinking he can assert his power over a female by threatening her with physical violence.”

“Shocking,” Caroline agreed, happily.

“And what does he mean, about your spectacles?”

“Oh,” Caroline said. She listened for sounds, below stairs, of Braden forcing his way in. Where
was
he? “Nothing.”

“What did you reply?” Emily wanted to know. “I hope you told him to go and soak his fat head somewhere.”

“Of course I didn’t,” Caroline said. “That would only have been childish.”

“Caroline.” Emily’s voice was cautious. “Are you in love with him?”

Caroline felt her cheeks flare up again. “What? Me? In love? With Braden Granville?”

“You heard me,” Emily said, flatly. “Are you?”

Yes. That was the sorry answer, and she knew it. She didn’t know how it had happened, or even when. All she knew was that sometime in between that night at Dame Ashforth’s, and last night, when he’d slipped his hand down her shimmy, Caroline had fallen for Braden Granville. And fallen hard.

Not, of course, that she’d ever admit as much to Emmy. Or anyone, for that matter. “I hardly,” she said with a sniff, “know the man.”

“You just told me you know him a lot more intimately than you know Hurst,” Emily cried, “and you’re
engaged
to
him.
I don’t think it out of the realm of the possible— considering that I’ve known you my whole entire life, and never seen you act this way before—that you might be in love with Braden Granville.”

Fortunately, Caroline was spared from having to reply by another knock on the door.

“Lady Caroline,” Bennington said, calmly. “The gentleman’s reply.”

Caroline winced and called, “Come in.” When the butler-had unlocked the door and let himself in, she whispered, loudly, “Really, Bennington, did you have to say the word
gentleman
so loudly? Do you want my mother to hear, and put me on bread and water rations next?”

“Really,
Bennington,” Emily said, severely.

“I beg your pardon, my lady,” the butler said. He kept his chin very high in the air. “You’re quite right. Here is the reply.”

Caroline snatched the paper off the silver salver and opened it. Scrawled on the bottom of her own letter were the words,

Do you honestly expect me to believe this ridiculous story of your being locked in your room like some sort of princess in a tower? If it is true, then all I can say is that I sadly underestimated your intelligence if a mere lock is all it takes to keep you a prisoner in your own home.

Of course, if it
isn’t
true, then all I can say is may God forgive your lying soul, since I certainly won’t. B. G.

Caroline looked at the butler.

“Will there be a reply, my lady?” he asked, in a bored voice.

“Yes,” Caroline said, removing her spectacles and standing up. “But I shall be making it in person.”

Emily gasped and stood up, as well. “Caroline!”

Caroline, ignoring the shocked expressions on both their faces, reached for her reticule, into which she slipped her eyeglasses.

“Pardon me, Lady Caroline,” Bennington said. “But did I hear you correctly? Did you say—”

“Yes,” Caroline said. She pulled a bonnet down from one of the hooks on the inside of her closet door, and secured the ribbons beneath her chin in an enormous, saucy bow. “You heard me correctly. I am going out.”

“But,” the butler said, “begging your pardon, Lady Caroline, I believe your mother expressly forbade you from—”

“Bennington,” Caroline said, tugging on her gloves. “You’ve never struck a woman, have you?”

“Indeed, no, my lady,” the butler said, looking a bit panicked.

“And you would never do anything,” Caroline said, reaching for her parasol, “to hurt me, would you?”

“Um.” Bennington swallowed hard. “No, indeed, my lady.”

“Then—” She swung the parasol up until it rested on her shoulder. “—I’m sorry to have to inform you that the only way you are going to stop me from walking out that door, Bennington, is if you strike me, something you just said you would never do.”

Bennington lowered the salver . . . and his chin. “Very well, my lady,” he said, glumly. “Only do be so good as to explain to the Lady Bartlett that I only relented under duress.”

“Of course,” Caroline said. “That goes without saying.”

“Caroline!” Emily hurried after her as Caroline left her bedroom and started down the stairs. “Have you lost all the sense God gave you? You can’t go anywhere with that man. Who knows what he’ll try to do next?”

That, Caroline thought, with a flash of guilt, is precisely why I’m going.

“Caroline, don’t you see? Don’t you see what he’s doing to you? He’s doing to you exactly what he’s done to dozens of other women—hundreds, maybe. He’s seducing you.”

“No,” Caroline replied. “He isn’t.”

“Caroline, open your eyes. Of course he is. What else could he want?”

Caroline paused on the stairs. “He said I . . . interest him.”

“Forgive me, Caroline.” Emily looked pained. “But what could you possibly have to say that would interest a man like Braden Granville?”

Caroline considered her friend’s question carefully. “Well,” she said. “Let me see. We’ve discussed the nature of love, Tommy’s accident, my mother, kissing, his fiancée’s pending breach of promise suit, Hurst, and . . . oh, and the importance of creating a romantic atmosphere.” She turned and gave Emily a knowing smile. “If, however, his plan really is to seduce me, I shall put up a spirited defense. Never fear.”

“And I’m sure running off like this to see him is the best way to do that.” Emily stood on the landing, her hands stretched out in open appeal to her friend. “

Caroline, listen to yourself. He’s a manipulative wretch. It’s men like him—charming snakes like Braden Granville— who keep women like us from ever achieving our full potential, because he divides us, pits us one against the other—”

“Oh, Emmy,” Caroline said, as she hurried down the stairs. “For heaven’s sake, he does no such thing. I’m sure he’s never even been
near
Parliament.”

“Well,” Emily amended, quickly. “You’ve got to admit that at the very least, if you go to him, now, in this manner, your reputation will be in shreds by sundown.”

“Emmy,” Caroline said. “Don’t fuss so. I’ll be home before Ma even
thinks
about dressing for supper. She’ll never miss me, same as she never even knew you were here. When I come back, Bennington can lock me in again, and everything will be fine.”

“Caroline—” Emily had to pause to catch her breath, even though it was Caroline who was wearing the restrictive corset, not her. “—I don’t understand. Why are you doing this? You know it can’t lead to anything, except perhaps your ruin. So why are you doing it?”

Caroline did not hesitate. She threw open the front door, and stood in a shaft of late afternoon sunlight. “ Because he asked me to,” she called over her shoulder, then stepped outside, and tugged the door closed firmly behind her.

19

“
I
f you weren’t going to come,” Braden Granville said, without even a good evening or how-do-you-do, “the least you could have done was let me know.”

Caroline eyed him uneasily. Whatever else she might have been expecting when she’d allowed his driver to help her into the back of this tasteful curricle, it wasn’t
this.
He looked so angry, like a summer storm cloud, threatening to unloose a torrent. In the dim light of the carriage—he had thoughtfully lowered the window screens, so that no one might recognize Caroline as they drove along—he looked more saturnine than ever.

Saturnine, maybe, but also undeniably appealing, in a way that Hurst, who was far better looking in the traditional sense, never had.

“I couldn’t,” Caroline said, carefully. “I’m being punished. I’m not even allowed to send a message with a servant. Ma instructed them all to—”

“For going into a garden with me?” His expression went from scornful to incredulous. “Am I an ogre, then?”

Caroline laughed at that. She couldn’t help it. “No, much worse. You’ve got a reputation.” When his only response to this was a grimace, she said, “Don’t pretend you don’t know that they call you the Lothario of London,” and was quite pleased that the little throb of emotion she felt saying it—
Lothario of London
—didn’t show in her voice. Just precisely what that emotion was, of course, she refused to admit to herself.

But Braden Granville made no effort at all to hide what he felt upon hearing his popular moniker. Both of his hands, lying ungloved on his thighs, clenched into fists, just for a moment. And then his fingers relaxed again.

Caroline, observing this from where she sat beside him on the softly padded seat, could only raise her eyebrows, feeling a quick wave of helplessness wash over her. The sight of those fists—so large, so uncompromisingly masculine—caused her to recall what Emily had said in her bedroom. He was from a different world, a world where fists and bullets and knives and garrotes were commonplace.

Not that Caroline thought he’d ever use those fists on
her.
But seeing them reminded her of the other name she’d heard people call him: Dead Eye.

What was she doing? What was she
doing
here? Emily was right. She was a fool. She oughtn’t to be here. She ought to be with Hurst, who hadn’t any other name than that, just Hurst, and occasionally, Lord Winchilsea, and whom she’d never even seen make a fist.

“So your mother,” Braden Granville said, breaking in on her frantic thoughts, “locked you in your room as punishment for stepping into the Dalrymples’ garden with the Lothario of London.”

His voice was devoid of any sort of inflection. Still, Caroline rushed to assure him, “Well, it’s only because she doesn’t know you, except by reputation. Tommy talks of you, you know, almost incessantly.”

“It’s odd,” he said, almost whimsically, “that your brother doesn’t share your feelings about the immorality of my designing guns for a living, considering what one did to him.”

Caroline nodded. “He’s still quite keen on them. Stranger still, he’s anxious to get back to school in the fall. You would think that after what he went through, Oxford would be the last place he’d ever want to see again, but he seems quite eager. He even suggested we take a weekend trip there not too long ago, though the doctor says he’s not up to it. He’s not supposed to be dancing, either, but that doesn’t stop him.”

“Do you think he wants to find the man who—” But he broke off, and only looked at his hands.

She looked up at him questioningly. “Man who what?”

“Never mind. I’ve instructed my driver to take us round the park. I felt we had things we needed to discuss, you and I. And this way, there won’t likely be any more interruptions.”

Remembering precisely what they’d been doing the last time they’d been interrupted—when Hurst had walked in on them in the garden—Caroline swallowed, and was careful not to look at his face as she said, “Yes. I wanted to speak with you, as well. I—I was going to write to you, as soon as my mother would let me send a note. You see—”

“You needn’t say it,” he said. There was a wealth of weariness in his tone. Caroline risked a glance at his face, and saw it turned toward hers, his dark eyes fastened onto hers with an intensity that sent the same shivers up and down her spine as that single finger he’d laid upon her. “The suit. I know you won’t be able to testify—”

She was shaking her head before the words were fully out of his mouth. “Oh, no,” she said. “That’s not it at all. Of course I’ll still . . . help you.” And then she remembered her mother’s warning from the night before, about how she’d sell off her horses, and bit her lip. “I might,” she said, “need a place to put my horses for a while, however, if I do. How many does your stable hold? You wouldn’t happen to have room for about twenty more, would you?”

The intense look he’d been giving her turned to one of confusion. “Twenty more horses?”

“They—” She shook her head again with a feeling of hopelessness. “Oh, never mind. I’m sure she didn’t mean it. No, I promised to help you with Lady Jacquelyn’s suit, and I still shall. Only I’m afraid I won’t be able to continue with the, um, lessons anymore.”

Slowly, that scarred eyebrow rose, and with it, one side of his mouth—just a corner. “Is that so,” he said, in a tone that suggested he was only mildly interested in what she was saying.

“Yes,” she said, firmly. “You see, it’s just not going to work.”

Again the disinterested tone. “You think not?”

“No. There isn’t any point to it now.”

Both the eyebrow and that single corner of his mouth dropped, until he was frowning at her. There was nothing disinterested in his tone when he asked, quickly, “What do you mean?”

Caroline shook her head sadly. “The pants just don’t fit.”

He looked confused. “What pants?”

Caroline sighed. “Hurst. You know what they say. Don’t buy the pants without trying them on first. Well, I tried them on, and it turns out they don’t fit after all. So there isn’t very much point in continuing the lessons, is there?”

Though she was sitting a good six inches from him on that padded seat, with not even the edge of her skirt touching him, she felt him stiffen. She started to turn toward him questioningly, but a split second later, he’d swung round on the seat and grasped both her shoulders.

“You had relations with Slater?”
he asked, in a choked voice.

Caroline stared up into his anger-darkened face, utterly bewildered by his accusation—and the fact that he seemed so upset. “ Relations?” she echoed, shocked. “Of course not! I only kissed him, for heaven’s sake!”

The grip on her shoulders loosened at once. All of the dark color that had come into his face drained out of it, and then he said, “My God,” and released her, turning a broad shoulder upon her.

Caroline stammered, “I—I tried to kiss him the French way—you know, the way you taught me—and he didn’t seem to like it at all. He was quite put out with me about it, actually. So you see, besides the fact that the pants don’t fit, they aren’t working, your lessons. So what is the point?”

Beside her, Braden lifted a hand—one of those traitorous hands that had reached out so rashly and seized her a moment ago, despite the promises he’d made to himself that he would not touch her again—and ran it through his thick dark hair. What, he asked himself,
was
the point? He had been asking himself that exact same question as his mantel clock had struck the half hour, and he’d finally admitted that Caroline wasn’t coming. What madness had induced him to order his carriage round and set off after her, he could not imagine.

He told himself it was because he wasn’t a man used to being kept waiting. People simply did not break appointments they’d made with Braden Granville. The fact that Lady Caroline Linford had done so—without so much as a beg-your-pardon—had infuriated him. She had promised to come at four o’clock, and when she had not arrived, he had felt himself perfectly justified in going to her house to demand an explanation. . . .

But more than that, he supposed, he had come . . . to see. To see
what,
he wasn’t quite certain. To see whether or not that fop of a fiancé of hers had figured out exactly what they’d been doing when he’d interrupted them the night before. To see if Caroline Linford, whom he hadn’t taken for a coward, was hiding behind her mamma’s skirts, afraid now, by the sensations he knew he’d roused in her.

Or maybe just to see if there were still sparks flying in those lucid eyes of hers.

If that was the case, he’d got his answer. There were sparks there, all right. Sparks and even, he fancied, a few bottle rockets, as well. Lady Bartlett could lock her daughter up for a thousand days, but she would never manage to put out the fire that shone in those deep brown eyes, eyes which reflected Caroline’s every passing emotion, eyes in which, Braden felt, he could lose himself. . . .

Rallying himself, he said, as lightly as he could, “I feel the need to investigate this further.”

Caroline, relieved that whatever passion had seized him appeared to have vanished, asked, “Investigate what?”

“This failure you cited.” He was careful not to look at her lips. But nor could he look into those translucent eyes. He settled for looking at her gloved hands, folded primly in her lap. “With your fiancé.”

“Failure?” Comprehension dawned. “Oh, you mean the kiss? Well, it hardly matters. I told you, it’s quite clear the pants don’t fit. I can see now that . . .
that
aspect of our marriage—” She was much too embarrassed to say the word
sexual.
“—will probably never be particularly good—”

If that were true, Braden said to himself, it was only because Slater was uninterested in the female sex. Or a eunuch.

“—so I intend to concentrate on other, more important things.”

Braden had to look at her eyes then. He could not believe she was serious. But her steady gaze told him that indeed, she was so.

“More important than what goes on in the matrimonial bed?” he asked, incredulously. “And what things would those be?”

Caroline sighed. Really, it was vexatious, having to explain herself to this man all the time. Even more vexatious was that she didn’t have to. It wasn’t as if there was a lock upon the carriage door. She could open it and get out any time she cared to.

But she didn’t care to. Which was the most vexatious thing of all.

“Furnishing our new household,” she said, slowly. “Entertaining our friends. Hurst has quite a lot of them, you know. He’s quite fond of cards—he and Tommy both—and we attend frequent card parties. I will have to reciprocate, once I’m Lady Winchilsea—”

“And that is more important to you,” Braden said, woodenly. “Being Lady Winchilsea, and reciprocating card parties, than marrying a man who—”

He broke off. What was he doing? What was he
doing?

She was glaring at him from her corner of the carriage. “Of course that isn’t important to me,” she said, angrily. The bottle rockets, he saw, were there in force. “How can you say such a thing? I told you why I’m marrying him.”

“Because of what he did for your brother? Tell me something, Lady Caroline. If the man who’d saved your brother had been a dust picker rather than a marquis, or a one-eyed hunchback, rather than a golden-haired dandy, would you feel the same obligation to marry him?”

The bottle rockets turned suddenly into twin volcanoes. “Of course not,” Caroline snapped. “I didn’t agree to marry Hurst solely because of what he did for my brother. I loved him, too.”

Then, as if realizing she’d said something indiscreet, she pressed her lips together, and turned her face resolutely away from him, until it was hidden behind her bonnet brim.

Feeling a sudden surge of what could only be called delight, Braden slid across the seat until their hips were touching—something which seemed to annoy Caroline, since she slid away, until she was pressed up nearly to the door.

“You
loved
him?” Braden reached out and lifted an amber curl that had escaped from her bonnet, and lay across her puffed white sleeve. “But you don’t anymore?”

“I didn’t say that.” All he could see of her face was one smooth cheek, but it was most decidedly pink. “Of course I love him.”

“But not, perhaps,” Braden said, bringing the curl closer to his face, as if he wished to examine it, “the way a wife should love her husband. More, perhaps, the way a sister loves the man who saved her brother’s life.”

“If you say so,” was Caroline’s stiff response.

“But you loved him once in a different way,” Braden said. He lifted the curl to his nose. Her hair smelled, as he’d known it would, of lavender. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have come to me with your interesting . . . proposal. I wonder what happened, Lady Caroline, to make you fall out of love with your fiancé.”

She knew what he was thinking. She knew it as surely as she knew her name. He thought she’d fallen in love with him.

And was he really so far wrong? It was not, of course, what had
really
woken her from the stupor into which Hurst’s kisses had placed her. If only she could tell him what had
really
happened to break that spell! That would surely wipe the knowing smile from his face.

Yes. And put a bullet through Hurst’s.