Educating Caroline (4 page)

“Hadn’t you better go, Mr. Granville?” Caroline asked, trying to disguise the urgency in her voice. “If you mean to find Lady Jacquelyn, I mean.”

“Yes,” he said. There was no kindness in his voice now. “Well, I’m sure there’s no chance of that any more.”

Caroline, alarmed, asked, “No chance of what? Finding her? Oh, you’re quite wrong. I’m sure she’s still close.” Then, realizing what she’d said, she thrust a finger toward the opposite end of the hallway. “I’m sure if you just follow her—”

“No point,” Braden Granville said, flatly. Then he added, almost as if to himself, “I lost any chance I might have had at catching her out in her little game when I took a wrong turn ten minutes back, and ended up in the kitchens.”

“Little game?” Caroline echoed, faintly.

Like someone recalling himself, Braden Granville said, “Never mind. Feeling any better yet?”

Caroline inhaled. Her temples tightened with the beginning of a headache, but surprisingly, she found that she could breathe normally again.

“Much better,” she said. “Thank you.” And then, because she was worried he might know more about the details of his fiancée’s faithlessness than he was letting on—like, for instance, the identity of her secret lover— she added, “I’m sure you’re wrong, Mr. Granville. About your bride-to-be. I’m certain she isn’t involved in any . . . little game. With anyone.”

The laugh Braden Granville let out was every bit as wicked as his smile had been when she’d told him—oh, why, why had she told him?—that she’d seen his fiancée with another man.

“How very good-natured of you, Lady Caroline,” he said, in a tone that wasn’t the least bit complimentary. “But please allow me to assure you that your confidence in Lady Jacquelyn is sorely misplaced. And when I get the name of the fellow, I’ll be only too happy to prove it, in a court of law, if necessary. You might mention that to her, when next you see her.”

Quite openmouthed at this extraordinary declaration—and at the thought that she and Jacquelyn Seldon were anything but the most distant acquaintances— Caroline fought to think of some sort of reply.

She was saved, however, from making any when the door to Dame Ashforth’s private sitting room opened and the Marquis of Winchilsea stepped into the corridor.

“Oh,” Caroline said, finding her voice at last. “Dear.”

2

C
aroline was not at all certain which man looked the most surprised: the Marquis of Winchilsea, who appeared quite shocked at seeing his fiancée with her face being pressed into her lap by a man to whom she was not related, or Braden Granville, who removed his hand from her neck at once and said, “Winchilsea,” in a tone of voice which suggested Hurst was not one of his favorite people.

“Granville.” Hurst’s voice made it clear that the feeling was mutual. Then, in a very different tone, he said, “Caroline, darling, whatever are you doing, sitting on those dirty servants’ steps?”

Caroline narrowed her eyes at him through the banister-bars. How
dare
he call her darling when . . .

She shook herself. Now was not the time.

“I,” she stammered. “I was l-looking for you. And it seems I grew a little faint. And Mr. Granville was very kindly helping me.”

She couldn’t help glancing, several times, behind Hurst, to see whether or not Lady Jacquelyn would fol low him out.
Please,
she found herself praying.
Please, please stay where you are, Lady Jacquelyn.

“And why,” Hurst inquired, pleasantly, “would you go and do something as foolish as faint, Caroline?” He stretched a gloved hand toward her. Caroline took it, and allowed him to draw her from the steps. She was perfectly unable to take her gaze from his face.
Why, not so long ago, Lady Jacquelyn Seldon’s tongue was in that mouth,
was all she could think.

“You’re generally made of much sturdier stuff than that,” Hurst was saying. “That’s what I admire most about you, you know, my dear.”

“Mr. Granville thought it might have been because of my corset,” Caroline murmured, hardly aware of what she was saying.

“Oh, he did, did he?” Hurst laughed. Though the laugh was distinctly humorless, it took away most of the heat of his next words, which were, “I’ll thank you, Granville, to keep your comments about my fiancée’s undergarments to yourself. And your hands, too, while you’re at it.”

Braden Granville didn’t say anything right away. He was looking at the marquis very curiously, Caroline thought. Almost as if . . . almost as if he
knew!

But that was impossible. He couldn’t possibly know. It wasn’t as if Hurst hadn’t remembered to tuck in his shirttail, or tighten his cravat. He was perfectly presentable. Maybe there was a bit more color than usual in his cheeks, but surely that wasn’t indicative of anything—

“I’d be happy to,” Braden commented, lightly. “If you’d be willing to return the favor.”

Hurst looked startled. He said, “What? What are you talking about, Granville?”

Braden nodded toward the closed door. “That’s Dame Ashforth’s private sitting room, is it not?”

“Yes,” Hurst said, with obvious reluctance. “What of it?”

Braden laid a hand upon the doorknob. Quite suddenly, Caroline found it difficult to breathe again. “ Nothing,” he said. “I am merely looking for someone.”

On the word
someone,
Braden Granville threw open the door. Caroline’s knees promptly went out from under her. She sank back down onto the step and buried her face into her lap again, telling herself to breathe, just breathe, while wondering if this was the last time she would ever see her fiancé alive. . . .

And if, really, his untimely death would be such a bad thing, after all.

But of course, of
course
she did not want to see Hurst dead. Not after what he’d done for Tommy. Maimed, possibly, but never, ever dead.

But evidently, Hurst Devenmore Slater, tenth Marquis of Winchilsea, would live to see his wedding day— though the identity of his future bride was still somewhat in question—since presently, Caroline heard Braden Granville say, in a mild voice, “But I see I was mistaken.”

Caroline lifted her face from her lap. Lady Jacquelyn, then, hearing their voices in the hall, must have found some other way out of the room. What a stroke of luck for them all!

“Quite,” Hurst said, in a voice that was much too selfcongratulatory. “You were
quite
mistaken, Granville. My dear.” Hurst was drawing her up from the steps again. “Shall we go downstairs, and join your mother?”

Caroline felt as if there were sand in her mouth. Why, Hurst was speaking to her as if nothing—nothing at all— had occurred. She would have thought that a man who intended to break off his engagement wouldn’t refer to his fiancée as
darling
or
my dear.
And he oughtn’t, she thought, to put his hand on the small of her back. That was a bit forward, for someone who only moments before had . . .

She didn’t want to think about that.

Then she happened to glance at Braden Granville, who’d come out of the sitting room, and was drawing the door of it closed behind him. Oh, of course. That was it. Hurst didn’t want to cause a scene in front of anyone. Particularly, she supposed, in front of his lover’s fiancé. He was going to wait, she supposed, until they were alone. Then he’d explain why it was that she was no longer the future Lady Winchilsea.

“Certainly,” she said. She looked again at Braden Granville and felt, seemingly from out of nowhere, a queer little spurt of emotion. What, she wondered, was
that?
Not pity, surely—though it was quite true that if Braden Granville cared for Lady Jacquelyn anywhere near as much as Caroline supposed she ought to have cared for Hurst, he was going to be very hurt when he found out the truth about the lying, scheming devil spawned whore to whom he had pledged himself.

But she didn’t believe he cared for Lady Jacquelyn. Not the way he’d spoken about her and her “little game.”

No, it wasn’t pity Caroline had felt when she’d glanced at Braden Granville just then. But what, then? Caroline’s heart was a tender one, it was true, but she did not normally feel warmly toward ruthless businessmen and heartless Lotharios.

“Good evening, Mr. Granville,” she said, stifling the inexplicable emotion, and extending her hand toward him. “And thank you for your kindness.”

Braden Granville looked down at her gloved hand with some surprise. Caroline had apparently startled him, and from some very dark thoughts, if the look on his face was any indication. But he roused himself and took hold of her hand, bringing it rather distractedly toward the general vicinity of his lips without actually touching it with them.

“Good evening,” he said, not looking at either of them. And then he turned, and disappeared down the hall.

As soon as he was out of earshot, Hurst snorted disgustedly, and said, “Cheeky blighter!”

Caroline glanced up at her fiancé. This, too, was not the sort of behavior she might have expected from a man about to liberate himself from the bonds of matrimony.

“What did you say?” she asked, certain she had not heard him aright.

“The gall of him, mentioning your corset like that! Not that I’d have expected anything better mannered from such an upstart. You know, there’s a place for men like him. Do you know what it’s called? America.”

“Oh,” Caroline murmured.
“Really,
Hurst.”

“I’m quite serious, Carrie. I tell you, I don’t like it, this new habit of inviting every Tom, Dick, and Harry in London to what used to be thoroughly exclusive, private parties. I mean, I know the fellow’s filthy rich, but that doesn’t make him any less common than he was the day he was born.”

Maybe not,
Caroline only just kept herself from saying out loud.
But at least he knows how to earn—and hold on to—money. That’s a skill
you’ve
certainly never managed to acquire, Hurst.

Only of course she didn’t say so. Hurst was quite sensitive about the fact that his family hadn’t any money left. In fact, when he’d proposed to her, it had been almost apologetically.
I know I haven’t much, Carrie,
he’d said.
But everything I’ve got I’d gladly give to you, if only you’d do me the honor of being mine.

And Caroline, overjoyed at the prospect of having such a handsome, such a romantic, such a brave man— hadn’t he saved her brother’s life?—for a husband had uttered a resounding
Yes.

More fool she.

“You mark my words, Carrie,” Hurst went on, as they stood in the hallway, listening to Braden Granville’s departing footsteps. “This isn’t going to come to any good, this mingling of the classes. Interfering old women like Dame Ashforth might find it amusing, but I most decidedly do not.”

And then he took Caroline’s arm, and began to steer her down the corridor in the opposite direction from the one in which Braden Granville had disappeared.

As they walked, Caroline’s mind turned over his words feverishly. Carrie. He’d called her Carrie, his private name for her. Why would he call her by his special name for her if he were about to break off their engagement? Why, he was calling her
Carrie
and
darling
just as if nothing had happened. Nothing at all. In fact, if she hadn’t taken that wrong turn on her way from the ladies’ cloakroom, heard Hurst’s laughter, then seen for herself just what, precisely, he had been up to since he’d left her in the ballroom—supposedly to go and “have a smoke” with the gentlemen—she would not in a million years have guessed that he’d been with another woman.

Been
with
another woman? Good Lord, he’d been
inside
another woman. And yet now he was behaving as if he
had
only stepped into Dame Ashforth’s billiard room for a few moments to smoke!

“I hope,” Hurst was saying, as the sounds of the revelry below stairs grew louder, “that he didn’t insult you, Caroline. He didn’t, did he? Granville, I mean.”

Caroline, moving as if in a daze, rather like the hero ines in her maid’s novels always did after discovering a corpse in the hedge maze, murmured incoherently, “ Insult? Me? What?”

“Well, I shouldn’t be surprised if he did. He has something of a reputation, you know. With the ladies, I mean. He didn’t touch you, did he, Carrie? Somewhere he oughtn’t?”

They were once again engulfed in the sea of humanity that flooded Dame Ashforth’s ballroom. Caroline could barely hear her own reply, which was an astonished, “No!”

It was drowned out as the orchestra suddenly launched into a familiar tune.

“Good Lord,” Hurst said, seizing her by the hand. “It’s the Sir Roger de Coverley. I’d forgotten it was scheduled to begin at midnight sharp. Come along, Carrie, let’s take our places. You know how Ashforth feels about the Sir Roger.”

Caroline did, indeed, know how Dame Ashforth felt about the Sir Roger. Nothing—not marauding Zulu warriors, brandishing spears and poisoned darts, and certainly not philandering fiancés—would ever cause her to postpone a Sir Roger. While the widow declared herself too old to take part in the lively dance, she enjoyed nothing better than watching it performed by the young people she’d invited to her home.

Her mind still awhirl, Caroline took her place in a long line of couples. Hurst stood across from her, looking coolly elegant in his fine evening clothes. His cravat was not in the least crumpled, his trousers still bore a perfect crease. How was that possible? The man had been making violent love—Caroline wasn’t sure this description was accurate, but it had been mentioned once or twice in a book she’d read, and she’d rather liked the way it sounded—to a beautiful woman not a quarter of an hour ago, and yet there he stood now, looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. It was perfectly incredible.

And then—as if the evening had not gone bizarrely enough—suddenly, right before Caroline’s eyes, appeared Lady Jacquelyn Seldon. Truly, there she was, her lovely head thrown back as she laughed with delight as she made her way down the line of dancers. And beside her, keeping very good time for someone not to the manor born, was Braden Granville.

Caroline stared, certain her eyes were going to pop out of her head. So he had found his Lady Jacquelyn at last, had he? And the lady, like Hurst, looked no different than she had at dinner, before their secret assignation. Incredible. Perfectly incredible. How was it possible that two people could have been engaged in doing . . . well, what the two of them had been doing . . . and then, a quarter of an hour later, be calmly dancing the Sir Roger de Coverley with someone
else?

It was more than a girl like Caroline could assimilate in one evening. When it came time for her and the marquis to promenade, she did so with all the grace of an automaton, hardly aware of what her feet were doing beneath her. Hurst did not seem to notice, however. He was in very high spirits, and swung her about most energetically, whispering endearments into her ear whenever her head came close enough for him to do so. He called her a pretty little thing and said, again, that he couldn’t wait until their wedding night to make her his own. Caroline heard what he said, and yet she did not respond. What could she say?

Because of course she knew now there would be no wedding night. Not for the two of them. For whatever reason—and Caroline suspected very strongly that the reason had a good deal to do with the size of the inheri tance she’d come into recently, and the fact that Hurst had no income at all—Hurst was not going to break off the engagement.

Which meant only one thing: Caroline was going to have to do it.

It wasn’t going to be easy, of course. Her mother would be furious. After all, they owed Hurst Slater . . . well,
everything.
If it hadn’t been for him, Tommy would have died that chilly December night, bled to death on the street outside his college.