Educating Caroline (3 page)

He knows,
she thought.
Good Lord, he knows.

This just might end in bloodshed after all.

Without conscious thought, she rose to her feet, and said, “H-hullo.” Only her voice came out sounding extraordinarily breathless.

Braden Granville looked up sharply. “Who’s there?” he asked.

“It’s only me,” Caroline said. Whatever was the matter with her voice? It sounded ridiculously high-pitched. She made an attempt to lower it. “Caroline Linford. I sat next to you last month at a dinner at Lady Chittenhouse’s. You probably don’t remember. . . .”

“Oh. Lady Caroline. Of course.”

There was no mistaking the disappointment in his deep voice. As she’d been speaking, he’d raised the candelabra and looked at her. She knew perfectly well what he’d seen: a young woman of medium height and medium weight, whose hair was neither blonde nor brown, but a sort of sandy color, and whose eyes were neither blue nor green, but quite emphatically brown. Caroline knew she did not possess anything like the stunning dark beauty of Lady Jacquelyn Seldon, but she also knew—because her brother Thomas had told her, and brothers were nothing if not brutally honest—that she wasn’t a girl to pass over without a second look, either.

But Braden Granville certainly passed her over, quite without a second look.
As if he were anything much to look at himself,
Caroline thought, with some indignation.
Conceited pig.
After all, he wasn’t nearly so handsome as Hurst. Whereas the Marquis of Winchilsea was a golden Adonis, with his curly blond hair, blue eyes, fair complexion, and tall, arrow-straight frame, Braden Granville was dark as sin, broad across the shoulders to the point of being barrel-chested, and always looked as if he needed a shave, even, Caroline was quite certain, right after he’d just had one.

Braden Granville lowered the candelabra and said, “I don’t suppose you’ve seen Lady Jacquelyn Seldon come this way, have you?”

Caroline’s gaze darted toward the sitting room door. She hadn’t meant it to. She hadn’t meant to look anywhere near that door. But her gaze was drawn to it as surely as the moon drew the tide.

“Lady Jacquelyn?” she echoed, stalling for time.

What would happen, Caroline wondered, if she told him she
had
seen Lady Jacquelyn? That she was, in fact, just inside that door?

Why, Braden Granville would kill Hurst, that’s what. Thomas had told her all about the man he referred to admiringly as “Granville.” How “Granville,” who’d been born in Seven Dials, the poorest, seediest district in London, had made a fortune in the firearms business. How “Granville” was as ruthless in his personal life as he was in his business affairs. How “Granville” was known for considering a bullet the swiftest way to handle problems in either area, a fact which was not hurt by his being a world-renowned crack shot with a pistol.

Why, Hurst couldn’t have hit the side of Westminster Abbey with a pistol, even by
throwing
the silly thing.

“Yes,” Braden Granville said, eyeing her curiously. “Lady Jacquelyn Seldon. Surely you know her.” “Oh,” Caroline said. “Yes, I know her. . . .”

“Well,” he said. The patience in his voice sounded quite forced. “Have you seen her go by here? With a . . . gentleman, perhaps? I have reason to believe she was not alone.”

Caroline swallowed.

How odious this was! Perhaps much more for him than for her. Because of course there was the fact that “Granville” had supposedly bedded more women than any man in London. This was not something Caroline’s brother had announced at the breakfast table, but something she’d overheard him discussing with his friends. According to Thomas, “Granville” apparently had as many lovers as the infamous Don Juan. In fact, Thomas and his friends called him—with straight faces, no less—the Lothario of London.

Only lately had the Lothario finally settled down, and made an offer of marriage to the most beautiful and accomplished woman in all of England, Lady Jacquelyn Seldon. Who at that very moment was straddling Caroline’s fiancé, the Marquis of Winchilsea.

Just imagine how a proud, self-made man like Braden Granville—a man who was universally admired for his skills as a lover—would feel when he found out his own fiancée had betrayed him. And with the Marquis of Winchilsea, of all people, who hadn’t a penny to his name, only his very pretty face to live upon! Why, all Caroline had to do was say a word—just one word—and she wouldn’t need to worry herself again with the wording of the
Times
announcement: Her wedding to the Marquis of Winchilsea would have to be called off due to his untimely death.

She shook herself. Good Lord, what was she thinking? She couldn’t allow Braden Granville to shoot Hurst. Not after the way Hurst had saved Tommy.

“I did see her,” Caroline admitted, finally. She pointed toward the far end of the corridor. “She went that way.”

Braden Granville’s face hardened. He hadn’t a very handsome face to begin with, in the traditional sense of the word, and it had not been treated kindly by life—he bore the deep scar of what looked like a knife wound in his right eyebrow.

But when that face hardened with determination, it became almost frightening to look at—like looking at the face of the devil himself. What in heaven all the women he’d bedded had seen in him, Caroline couldn’t imagine. She looked away, and concentrated instead on a vision in her mind’s eye of the face of the Marquis of Winchilsea, which was every bit as angelic as Braden Granville’s was . . . not.

“Was she with anyone?”

Caroline scissored a glance in his direction. “I beg your pardon?”

“I asked—” He took a deep breath, as if for patience. “Was Lady Jacquelyn with anyone? A man?”

Caroline replied, “Why, yes, she was.” There, she told herself. That ought to get rid of him in a hurry. And thus keep him from discovering the truth, which lay just beyond that door, a few feet away.

The smile Braden Granville’s lips curled into upon hearing this sent a convulsive shiver up Caroline’s spine. So pleased—so diabolically pleased—did he look, that for a moment, Caroline’s breath caught in her throat. Why, he really
was
a devil!

“Thank you, Lady Caroline,” Braden Granville said, sounding a good deal more cordial than he had before. And then he started down the hallway, and Caroline tried to breathe again.

And found that she couldn’t.

This was alarming, to say the least. But she was determined not to let Braden Granville know of her distress. No, what was important was not that she could no longer breathe, but that he go away, far, far away, so that Hurst might have a chance to escape. . . .

Only her efforts to hide her discomfort did not appear to have been very effective, since just as he passed the staircase upon which Caroline stood, Braden Granville turned and looked back at her, inquisitively.

“Are you quite all right, Lady Caroline?” he asked.

He knew, though she didn’t know how. She’d made no sound. How could she? She couldn’t breathe.

She nodded vigorously. “Perfectly well,” she managed to wheeze. “You’d better hurry, or you might miss her.”

But Braden Granville did not hurry. Oh, he looked very much as if he might have liked to. But instead he remained exactly where he was, looking at her with what, if she hadn’t already caught a glimpse of that wicked smile, she might have thought was concern.

But no one with a smile as evil as that could be capable of feeling concern.

“I think you’re lying,” Braden Granville said, and Caroline felt as if her heart might explode.

He knows!
she thought, frantically.
Oh, God, he knows! And now he’s going to kill Hurst, and it will be all my fault!

But then he said, “You aren’t perfectly well. You’ve lost all the color from your face, and you seem to be having difficulty drawing breath.”

“Nonsense,” Caroline gasped. Though she was lying, of course. She was gulping in enormous amounts of air, only none of it appeared to be actually getting into her lungs.

“It isn’t nonsense.” Braden Granville retraced his steps. When he’d reached the stairs on which Caroline stood, he leaned over and laid a hand upon the back of her neck, just as, a few moments before, Caroline had seen the Marquis of Winchilsea lay his hand upon the back of Lady Jacquelyn’s neck.

Caroline’s heart, which had skipped a beat when she’d first seen Braden Granville come down the hall, now started to beat so fast, she was certain it might burst. Good Lord, she thought, irrationally. He’s going to kiss me. He’s going to do to me whatever it is he’s done to all those women he’s supposedly bedded. And I shall be perfectly incapable of stopping him, because he’s the Lothario of London.

Oddly, Caroline found the thought of being kissed by Braden Granville not in the least upsetting.

Only instead of tilting her head up so that he could kiss her, the Lothario of London said, commandingly, “Sit down.”

Caroline was so startled that she sat without question. She didn’t suppose there were many people who would dare to disobey an order given by the great “Granville,” which was undoubtedly why he was so successful a businessman, not to mention lover.

Then Braden Granville’s hand on her neck tightened, and, incredibly, he pushed her head down until it was between her knees.

“There,” he said, with some satisfaction. “Stay like that, and you’ll be better in no time.”

Caroline, staring at the beading on her skirt, said, her voice muffled against the stiff white satin, “Um. Thank you, Mr. Granville.”

Her disappointment that he hadn’t tried to kiss her or molest her in any way, despite her dislike of him, was profound. And disturbing.

“Think nothing of it,” Braden Granville said.

Whoremonger!
Caroline thought to herself, as she stared into her own lap.
I suppose I’m not good enough to seduce. After all, who am I? Oh, only the daughter of the first Earl of Bartlett. A nothing. A no one. I’m certainly no great beauty, like Lady Jacquelyn Seldon. And I don’t have any manor houses in the Lake District.

But there’s one thing I jolly well
do
have that Lady Jacquelyn doesn’t: the common decency not to sleep with another woman’s fiancé.

Oh,
she added, mentally.
And a bit of money, too, of course.

She expected him to go then, but he did not. The strong hand remained on the back of her neck. It was surprisingly warm.

“Ridiculous things, corsets,” Braden Granville went on, conversationally. “Ought to be abolished.”

Caroline, perfectly astonished that a man as great as Braden Granville should be standing in a hallway with his hand upon her neck—and even more surprised that he should have brought up a subject as indelicate as her corset—said, into her lap, “I suppose some people think so. . . .”

Was this, she wondered, a prelude to taking her corset off her, and then—Good Lord—seducing her?

But Braden Granville only said, “I’m surprised you wear one at all. Aren’t you friends with Lady Emily Stanhope?”

This was such a surprising question that Caroline heard herself say,
“You
know Emmy?”

“Everyone knows Lady Emily. She’s become quite infamous for her involvement in the women’s suffrage movement. I had assumed, being her friend, that you were, as well.”

“Oh,” Caroline said, into her skirt. “I am. I mean, I don’t go to the rallies, or anything. I don’t much like rallies. It’s so much nicer to stay at home with a book than to go about shouting until you’re hoarse and chaining yourself to things.”

“I see that you are, at heart, a true freedom fighter, Lady Caroline,” Braden Granville observed drily.

“Oh,” Caroline said, realizing how foolish she must have sounded to him. “Oh, but I do support Emmy’s cause, you know. Last month alone I paid her court penalties twice because her father won’t do it anymore. And I only wear a corset because, well, I think I do look nicer in one than not.”

“I see.” He sounded amused. “Your suffragist leanings end where your comfort and vanity begin. At least you are honest enough to admit it.”

He was making sport of her. She knew that now. So he certainly wasn’t going to try to seduce her. Caroline didn’t know much about men, but she strongly suspected they wouldn’t bother seducing a girl they’d made sport of. She was relieved, she supposed. But it was a little insulting that he hadn’t even
tried.
After all, he’d apparently seduced every other girl in London. Why not her? Caroline knew she wasn’t an elegant beauty, but she’d certainly had her share of admirers, including, just that morning, a young man—a complete stranger—who’d chased her for nearly an entire city block after she’d roundly berated him for needlessly whipping his horse, only to tip his hat and say her smile was every bit as bright and pretty as a brandnew penny, and that he’d never whip another horse again.

But Braden Granville apparently hadn’t noticed her smile.

And then the memory of the reason why she’d lost her breath in the first place returned in a rush. All this time they’d been in the hallway discussing her corset, Hurst had been in mortal danger of discovery! Whatever could she have been thinking?