Not Proper Enough (A Reforming the Scoundrels Romance) (26 page)

He cocked his head in that annoying way he had but did not immediately ask the question he so obviously wanted to pose to her, which must be something along the lines of was she out of her mind? All he said was, “May I ask why?”

If he’d sounded like his usual pompous, blue-blooded self she’d not have answered him, but his question was soft and careful, and she was not in the correct frame of mind to deal with Lord Fenris or any of her contradictory feelings about him. She wanted that wall back between them because feeling hurt. “I could not sleep.”

“An unpleasant affliction.” He bowed. “I’m sorry to hear that.” He hesitated. Even in the dark she could see the emotions flickering over his face, and none of them were condescending. “Are you well, Mrs. Bryant?”

She hadn’t the fortitude to answer him in a way that would not reveal more than she was willing to have him know.

He looked away and then back at her. “Is there anything I can do?”

The question, coming from him, astonished her, but what threatened to bring her to tears was his sincerity. She was in a fragile state indeed if she believed he was sincere about anything but his condescension. No matter what they’d done in private. She swallowed hard and struggled for com-posure.

“Would you object if I accompany you on your walk?” He waded into the river of silence between them. He looked at the sky. “Early, I suppose, but dark nevertheless. The streets are not as safe as they ought to be. If something happened to you, I don’t expect I would long survive the ensuing encounter with your elder brother. I can follow behind you if you prefer to avoid my company.”

Lord, it was as if he wasn’t really Fenris, but some other man entirely. “I shan’t make you walk behind me. Don’t be absurd.”

He flashed a smile at her before he offered his arm. “I am relieved.”

Eugenia started walking again, not as fast as before. Fenris said nothing; he just kept pace with her. Martine stayed behind them.

“I don’t think we’ll have rain,” he said.

“No.”

“Nor snow.”

“No.”

“We’re having a mild end to our fall.”

“Yes.” She looked at him. He was the only person with whom she did not need to pretend she was fine when she wasn’t, and just knowing that eased her heart. “Listen to us, talking about the weather like two old tabbies.”

“Civilized tabbies, Mrs. Bryant.”

The silence came back, and after several minutes of that, she said, “I had a nightmare.”

“The normal sort or was it about me?”

“The normal sort.” She did not entirely succeed in sounding light or carefree. “I find that a walk is the only thing that settles my nerves.”

“I, too, find activity is beneficial when I’ve not achieved a calm state of mind. I am sorry to hear that your sleep was interrupted in so unpleasant a fashion.”

“I dreamed about Robert.”

He glanced at her but kept walking.

“I woke up crying. That hasn’t happened in months.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s odd the way something will make me think of him.” She swallowed. He’d known Robert. Before her, they’d been dear friends. “Lately, I’ll think, oh, Robert would have liked to know how that vote went, or that’s a story he would have loved to hear.” She clasped her hands behind her back. “I mean, what you said about Mr. Lane having the brains of a lobster. He would have loved to hear that.”

“He always did have a sense of the ludicrous, and Lane is certainly that.”

“I fear you made an enemy of him that night.”

“As if I hadn’t already.”

She slowed because she could hear Martine laboring to keep up. Fenris matched her pace. “And the button. Awful as it was, Robert would have laughed so hard.”

They seemed to be making a loop around the St. James’s area. The occasional carriage rattled by, carrying its passengers home from an evening of dancing and dining.

She glanced at him as they walked, and she had the strangest sensation of unwarranted intimacy. Not the physical kind, but something deeper. She watched him from the side, and he was Lord Fenris just now. Not Fox. And she did not exactly hate him.

“We are almost to St. James’s Street.” He pointed. “Best if we turn back rather than cross here.”

“Are you afraid you’ll be seen with me?”

He stopped walking, and his eyes burned into her. “Mrs. Bryant. St. James’s Street is not an area where a gentlewoman ought to be. At this hour. Unaccompanied.”

As if to prove his point, indistinct but raucous singing from another street became louder. She ignored the noise. “You’re with me. Martine is here. It’s hardly inappro-priate.”

Several men appeared at the far corner. They were singing and two or three had an arm slung around a compatriot. A very well-to-do group of young bucks. She wondered what and how much they’d drunk to get themselves in that condition. She even felt superior because she’d drunk whisky and not got herself into such a disgraceful state.

“If we were anywhere but here, I would wholeheartedly agree.”

“They’re on the other side of the street.” She returned her attention to Fenris. “Ignore them. Please. I don’t want to return home yet.”

One of the members of the inebriated group separated from the others and crossed the street. “Fox?” he called. “Is that you?”

“Damn,” Fenris whispered.

The singing stopped in favor of low laughter. The others
followed the first man, and before long, they were close enough for Eugenia to see that the man in the front was none other than the lobster-brained Mr. Dinwitty Lane. His friends gathered behind him.

Fenris pushed her into the shadows and flicked her hood over her head.

“You’ve female company.” Lane walked to within a few feet of Fenris. “Let’s see your commodity, shall we? Not the Incomparable, I’ll warrant. But someone just as lovely.”

Martine took a step forward, umbrella clutched in one hand. She put herself in front of Eugenia, between Mr. Lane and his friends. The men ogled her.

Lane lifted his quizzing glass and examined Martine. “Pretty enough, but I must say, she’s not up to your usual standard.”

This Fenris did not dignify with an answer, though he had the temerity to put an arm around Martine’s waist. Oh, he was a dog. A dog!

“Haggling over price?”

“You’ve had too much to drink.”

“I’m well-to-do, I daresay.” The men behind him joined in his laughter. Lane moved his quizzing glass in Eugenia’s direction. “What’s this? Not one companion but two. Oh, ho, ho.” There was just no mistaking the sexual nature of that laugh. He waggled a hand and actually attempted to move past Fenris and Martine. “A blonde? I’ve always heard you were partial to brunettes.”

“Lane, if you value your life, stand aside.”

“Let’s have a look at her. Is this one up to your standards?”

Martine blocked his way, putting a hand on his chest.

Lane’s expression darkened. “I do not suffer whores to touch me without my permission.”

Eugenia gasped.

Lane looked Martine up and down again in the most insulting manner possible. “You might do for him, but not for me. I wouldn’t give a shilling for you.”

“That’s enough.” Fenris addressed his companions. “Restrain him, or I won’t answer to the consequences.”

One of the men took that to heart. “Lane, come along. It’s not worth it.”

Lane, however, gave Martine a push and headed for Eugenia.

Fenris made a rather frightening sound, halfway to a growl, and grabbed Lane by one shoulder and shoved him back. At the same time, Martine bashed the fool over the head with her umbrella. Lane’s hat, crushed by the blow, tumbled to the pavement. Amid all this, his companions shouted or laughed. A few called out objections. Someone yelled, “Melee!”

The man who’d tried to call Lane back started for his friend. Too late. Much too late.

An infuriated Lane struck Martine. Fenris roared while Eugenia flew to Martine’s side. Lane’s eyes widened with recognition. “Lady Eugenia?”

She took Martine’s arm. Her maid kept her other hand pressed to her cheek. “Did he injure you?”

“No, milady.” But when Eugenia pried Martine’s hand from her cheek, she could see the beginnings of a bruise.

She whirled on Lane. “How dare you? How dare you, sir? Have you no decency?”

Lane ignored her. He stared at Fenris, openmouthed. “My God, man, Lady Eugenia? The bitch who threw you over for Robert Bryant?”

The silence that followed chilled Eugenia’s blood. Even Lane’s companions understood the gravity of that awful quiet. Martine plucked at her arm and pulled her away from Fenris and the others.

Fenris cocked his head in that way he had. The corner of his mouth twitched and then his expression was blank. “You are mistaken in every regard, Lane.” He sketched an elaborate bow. In the dim light, it was hard to tell, but she had the impression Lane had gone ashen. His friends remained uncharacteristically silent. “I’ll bid you good night. For now.”
He put his back to Lane and the others. “Mrs. Bryant, I’ll see you home.”

His voice frightened her, and she didn’t understand why. “Thank you, my lord.”

Fenris took her arm and headed them in the general direction of Spring Street. She stayed silent, afraid to speak lest he reply in that awful tone he’d used with Dinwitty Lane. They covered the distance between St. James’s and Number 6 Spring Street without a single word exchanged.

He went inside with her, and though he left the door to the street open, he took off his hat. “Martine. I need a word in private with Lady Eugenia. Go upstairs. I’ll send her to you shortly. If she’s not with you in twenty minutes, by all means come fetch her.”

Martine curtseyed and left. For a bit, they listened to the sound of her retreating footsteps.

“I suppose,” Fenris said, “there’s no talking you out of these walks.”

“Nothing else helps.”

“Have you a pistol? More to the point, if you do, do you know how to shoot?”

“Martine does.”

“What kind?”

“What kind? I don’t know. About this big.” She held her hands some four inches apart.

“Your maid is a frightening woman.”

“Yes.”

“I doubt you pay her enough.” His amusement faded, and it was as if it had never been there. He was again the way he had been with Mr. Lane in those moments of deadly quiet. Cold. Frighteningly remote. “Has she ever fired the weapon? And if she has, did she hit what she was aiming at?”

She waited half a heartbeat then said, “The hole in my dressing table is hardly noticeable. I keep a box of hairpins over it.”

Alas, he was not amused. He ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth before he replied. “I’ll pick you up at sunrise.”

“Sunrise. Why?”

“I’m
going to teach you how to shoot a pistol.”

“I don’t want to get up that early.”

“Will you agree to send for me before you go haring off on one of these walks of yours?”

“No.”

“Then you’ll meet me at sunrise.”

“Pistols at dawn?” She was shaking inside, and she did not understand why. She only knew she was filled with dread on his behalf. “How droll.”

He froze her blood with an icy stare. “If you don’t, I will write to your brother and tell him you’ve been endangering your life.” She believed him. Every word he said. “I will tell him, in no uncertain terms, that you cannot be trusted in London without him or your brother Nigel to look after you.”

“Can I shoot you?”

“No.”

“Pity.”

“Sunrise, Ginny.”

F
OX ARRIVED AT
E
UGENIA’S TOWN HOUSE AT TEN PAST
six in the morning. Sunrise wasn’t for another twenty minutes, so the street remained dark. He’d brought the closed carriage, for obvious reasons, and one without a coat of arms that would identify him to any curious observer.

No lights shone from the street-facing town house windows. He thought it unlikely she intended to accompany him on this venture. She hadn’t believed he was serious about any of it, and at any rate, she had the right to change her mind about such a reckless endeavor. He himself had had second thoughts, but how could he be the one to back down?

His coachman remained in the driver’s seat. Though the hour was early, the street was no longer silent. The carriage itself made soft noises, leather creaking, the springs reacting to shifts in weight, the horses, the groom and coachmen moving in their respective places. The lead horse lifted a shod foot and brought it down on the cobbles with a sharp clap. His groom dismounted; the faint thud of his shoes on the street carried all the way to him inside the carriage.

Fox leaned forward and pulled aside the curtain to signal the man that he wished to stay inside for now.

He’d be turned away at the door. Though he’d feel a fool for being ignored, he was damn well serious about writing to her brother if she refused. If she hated him the rest of his life, he’d still write the letter. While he stewed on his many unpleasant alternatives, he rubbed a finger over the surface of the medallion she’d given him. The motion was soothing. How long should he wait before he pushed the issue or gave up? She might still be sleeping, seeing as she’d not been home long. But that was her fault, wasn’t it? Not his.