Reckless in Pink (22 page)

Claudia recalled the name but not the story. If she asked her sister, Livia would forget herself recounting the tale. She was tired. She wanted to sleep.

A quick visit to the necessary in the powder room and then at the washstand and she was ready for bed. Night rail bedamned. Tonight she’d sleep in her shift.

Livia snuffed the candles and the bed rocked when she settled herself. “Claudia?”

“Yes?”

“If you really want him, go after him. You know how to create a scandal, Claudia, nobody better. It follows that you know how not to create one.”

In the darkness, Claudia chuckled. “Oh, I love you, dear sister. Good night.”

“Sleep well. You’ll need it.”

Every time Claudia set foot into an establishment where he was, she knew it. Be it ballroom, theater, park or even a street, she knew it. He did too. He must. Taking her sister’s oblique advice, Claudia became the pattern-card of propriety. After a severe dressing-down by her father, instead of defying him or answering back, she folded her hands and begged his forgiveness. Her actions shocked him so much, he asked her if she was her sister.

“No indeed, Papa. I suppose you might say I am growing up. Indeed I would not have gone had my brothers not sworn to take the greatest care of me.”

That would put the blame in the twins’ court. They could cope with it, and they had more credit with their father at the moment.

To her shock, her father’s attitude softened. “Do you care for him, puss?”

She swallowed. “I believe I do, Papa.”

“Then you shall have him.”

“No.” She made a pass with her hand in a gesture of pacification. “I mean, let me, sir. I promise you I will not do anything rash. He is an honorable man and a stubborn one. I have to—”

“Bring him to heel.” Her father leaned back in his chair, the wood creaking. He should really get it changed before it broke, they all told him. But he refused to allow her mother here to arrange things elegantly, as she had the rest of the house. His study was sacrosanct. “Very well. As long as you promise to get into no more scrapes. Do not try to force his hand or compromise him. Do you understand?”

“I despise such underhand ways,” she said, and she meant it. Trapping a man into marriage was not her idea of starting off well. She wanted him, but some of his honor must be rubbing off on her. No trapping him in a side room, no seducing him and then accidentally letting a maid see. That had happened, but it wasn’t deliberately and they’d escaped that fate.

Now he was keeping away from her for some nonsensical sense of honor. She would not have that. If he didn’t like her, that was something else, but she would not accept his sense of honor as an excuse.

She came up with another scheme. The one Ruth spoke about in the Bible. After all, what was a better example than one of the women of the Bible? Except Jezebel, perhaps.

She set her spies, and with a family as large and close as hers, that proved easy. Then set her plans accordingly.

When she insisted on attending the same milliner on Bond Street three days running, her mother demurred, until Claudia spied Lord St. Just leaving from the fencing academy across the road.

“Ah-ha. You love the yellow?” the assistant asked, bringing Claudia’s attention back to the present.

The yellow bonnet was the last one Claudia would have chosen. It made her look ill. Instead of arguing, she moved on to another in emerald green that she might actually get some wear from.

Her mother accepted her change with equilibrium, but asked her daughter, “Do you have to waft it about so vigorously? It’s such a bright color, Claudia. Is it entirely suitable?”

Perfect for her purposes.

Viscount St. Just stopped in his tracks and stared directly at her. A muscle in his jaw tightened, flattening the shape of his mouth. She’d ensured that he saw her yesterday with the pink straw and the day before, with the apricot hat. He must know the colors did not become her. Three days running was not a coincidence.

He crossed the road and entered the establishment. “You can’t wear that,” he said bluntly. “It would not do you justice. Did you buy the apricot and the pink?”

Claudia simpered. “I had not thought you noticed. No, they were not quite right, so I came back to find something that I preferred.”

He picked a plain bergère from a nearby stand. “Would this not do?”

The man serving them gave him a look of pure disdain. “Far too plain for her ladyship. She deserves only the best.”

“It’s charming,” Dominic said. “Lady Claudia looks good in anything. She just looks better in some things more than others.”

Claudia caught her mother’s amused glance when she looked into the mirror. Ignoring the sardonic smile, she took the hat from him and tried it on. It was plain enough to decorate as she wished. In fact, it was perfect. She tilted it over one eye and then straightened it in the approved manner, but she considered the tilt. She could set a fashion. She set it sideways again. The angle revealed her lacy cap and the gleam of her red-gold hair. “Take the green ribbon from the other and put it on this, on the right side.”

“Why not white ribbon?” someone asked from the doorway. Unknown to her someone had followed Dominic into the shop.

The Duchess of Northwich.

Tall, impossibly elegant, and gracious, the duchess usually kept clear of her husband’s intrigues, but never opposed him in public. Very few people could even assess the relationship between them, and Claudia wouldn’t even try.

“White does not become me.”

“White becomes everyone. Powder your hair.” The duchess smiled. “Of course I can understand why you are so proud of those fiery locks. They’re so distinctive.”

She turned and left.

Stricken, Claudia put the hat down. The message had come across clearly. A bunch of white ribbon—the White Cockade was the notorious symbol of the Jacobites. They used it to recognize each other, and to wear that particular arrangement in public was to acknowledge the connections. The duchess never wore it, but sometimes she came close. Everyone wore white ribbon. Just not in that particular way.

Her distinctive hair? Someone had seen her going into that house that she didn’t know about.

By her side, Dominic clenched his jaw. “Ignore her,” he said. “She knows nothing.”

“You can’t be sure.” Recalling where she was, Claudia forced a smile to the assistant. “I’ll take the bergère, with the green ribbon, if you please.”

Putting up her chin, she smiled at Dominic. “Do you go to the theater tonight?”

“No, I planned to go to—”

“Lord Marks’s small gathering for a few select gentlemen. Val mentioned it at breakfast this morning.”

His lips twitched. “The Strenshall breakfast is a meal to be feared, or so I hear.”

“You should come sometime.” She touched her finger to her lips. “Oh, wait, it’s family only.”

“We will have to see what we can do,” her mother told him, gifting him with a smile as they went to the door.

* * * *

The minx was following him. Dogging his every move would be too much of an exaggeration, but it came close. Every time he appeared in society, there she was. Talking to her friends, dancing with her admirers, greeting him with a sunny smile and a few sweet words. She’d appeared in the park wearing the “simple” hat, transformed into a riot of green ribbon, with a white rose nestled among the green. She wore it tilted to one side instead of straight on her head, and the next day half of fashionable London appeared with tilted bergère straw hats. While Claudia wasn’t a fashion-setter, she’d looked so charming in the hat that society had taken notice and acted accordingly.

What they had noticed was her liveliness. Several people remarked on it, and in his hearing. Her proximity to him had started people talking. As one week went by and another started, with no unusual events occurring to mar his safety, Dominic wondered if the Young Pretender had gone home.

Perhaps the man didn’t know, after all, but had been sounding him out and found him wanting. Dominic was still in turmoil. He needed someone to talk to, but the one person he could discuss things with was out of reach. Except she seemed determined not to be. She contrived to remain close to him whatever he said and however much he tried to separate himself from her.

Eventually, he got the message. He would have to do something or she’d never leave him alone, and in his heart, that was the last thing he wanted. Walking into a drawing room and not seeing her made his heart plummet. He wanted her, and as the week went by and he she danced and laughed and rode, his feelings became irrevocable.

Perhaps he could persuade her to wait until a better time, until his nemesis had returned to Italy and left him alone. Her family would keep her safe. Not as safe as he could. He wouldn’t leave her side.

The night he agreed to attend the theater at Drury Lane, he’d done it at the last minute so he considered himself safe. He’d watch the play and think, take his time to consider what he truly wanted. Seeing Claudia at every turn confused him and made him no longer sure of what he wanted and why he wanted it. He planned to keep her safe, not drag her into it, but the more he saw her the worse it got to recall that.

Their betrothal had been discussed and discarded by society, when they weren’t seen in public as a couple.

He sat in the box watching the play, hearing his friends exclaim at its quality. Dominic had no idea if he was watching Congreve or Shakespeare. He tried to concentrate but his senses worsened until all he could see was a flash of red-gold hair and a pink gown.

Then there she was in that damned pink gown. Sitting in the box plumb opposite to him, fluttering her fan and chatting with her brothers. Her mother was there. Now he had no chance of knowing what the play was or why it was so good.

He got to his feet at the interval and excused himself. “A damnable headache,” he said. “My military service—a knock on the head. Sometimes it comes back. The evening has been most enjoyable up to now.” Muttering about old war wounds often excused him and it did now. As long as he remembered he was supposed to have a headache, he should be fine. If he could remember anything at all.

Was this an accident? Society at this level was small, but surely not that small. He had seen her everywhere he’d been this last week, apart from White’s and the coffee houses. Even there he’d met some of her relatives. Surely she didn’t have that many?

Deep in thought, he strode down the wide corridor leading to the exit when a movement caught his eye. There she was.

This passage was relatively free of patrons. If the play had been a bad one, they’d all be here, conversing and flirting. But apart from half a dozen people he didn’t know, they were by themselves. She smiled and offered him her hand.

He had no choice but to bow over it. “Lady Claudia. If I’d known you were coming—”

“You’d have gone somewhere else?”

Her arch words didn’t hide the hurt in her voice, or perhaps he’d become too sensitive to her recently. Dammit, even now he wanted to hold her, to make her his. The urge was nearly irresistible, she’d teased and taunted him so much this last week.

“Would you like a private word, sir?”

Yes, he damned well would. “Without a chaperone, Lady Claudia?”

“My mother is waiting.”

He couldn’t bear this any longer.

He accompanied her to the responding corridor on the other side of the theater, and then to one of the small rooms set aside for private refreshment or rest. This one was furnished with a deep, soft sofa and a chair, together with a table laid with various comestibles and a decanter of red wine. He barely gave them a glance because they were blessedly alone.

“We used this room earlier,” she said, speaking fast and waving her gloved hand vaguely. “I thought we could—”

She got no further because he brought his mouth down on hers and feasted. When he touched her lips with his tongue, she opened her mouth and he was home. She tasted like…Claudia and responded sweeter than any woman he’d ever known. How they managed to reach the sofa he didn’t know. But she was sitting on it, and then lying as he urged her down on to the soft cushions.

Wrapping her arms around him, she dragged him close, but moved so she could slide her hands under the heavy folds of his coat. His waistcoat still lay between them, and so did her garments, but they could do nothing about that here and now. Enough that he had her in his arms, except, like a greedy child, he wanted more.

He finished the kiss and started on her throat, groaning at the softness of her skin. Surely no woman was this soft to the touch. Only one, only one. “You’re so lovely, Claudia. What have you done to me?”

“Foolish man. The same thing you’ve done to me. Have you wanted to talk over something with me this last week?”

He lifted up on one elbow, smiling down at her. “Many times. From the foolishness of Lady Harrison losing her gloves to a small dog to the gossip about us.” He smoothed an errant curl away from her cheek, just for the pleasure of feeling all that silkiness against her flesh.

She giggled. “They are talking about us, aren’t they?”

“Unfortunately yes. We need to do something about it.”

“What do you suggest?”

He kissed her again. “Not this.” He gazed down at her, her breasts pushed up above the décolletage of her pink gown, her hair becoming disarrayed against the green sofa cushions. She looked adorable. He touched her breasts, groaned, and bent to taste all that bounty. “I want you in my bed, naked. I want you there for a long time.”

“Why?” Her expression didn’t fool him for a minute.

“You know exactly why. I want to make love to you until neither of us can move. What do you do to me, Claudia?”

“I don’t know, but you do the same thing to me.” She slid her hand up his back to his neck and urged him down, initiating another kiss, tilting her head to seal their mouths more securely.

This time she tasted him. He loved the give and take between them. Once he’d taught her to kiss in this intimate way, she’d taken to it with enthusiasm, so much that she drove him to the brink of coming. Just with her kisses.