Sin and Sensibility (29 page)

“Ah, and what was her name?” the earl muttered with a grin, shaking his hand.

“George,” his wife chastised, curtsying. “We’re pleased you could join us, Lord Deverill.”

“Thank you, Lady Goldsborough.”

“Deeds, please show Lord Deverill to his chair,” the countess instructed, seating herself again.

As he strolled the length of the table behind the butler, he finally looked at the gaggle of fellow diners. The most prestigious guests would of course be seated closest to the head of the table, and Eleanor and Charlemagne were on either side of the earl and the countess, respectively.

“Shay, Lady Eleanor,” he greeted, nodding.

“Valentine. Makes sense you’d arrive in time for Lady Goldsborough’s famous chocolate dessert,” Shay returned, chuckling.

“It’d take Bonaparte attacking London to make me miss that,” he said, though he’d never heard the dessert mentioned before.

252 / Suzanne Enoch

Eleanor didn’t say anything, though she inclined her head politely enough. His abdomen tightened as he scented her lavender perfume. Sweet Lucifer, he should have gone to a club.

As he’d predicted, he ended up at the foot of the table, with Amelia Hartwood at one elbow and Roger Noleville at the other. “Miss Amelia, Mr. Noleville,” he said, accepting the wine one of the footmen offered.

“M-my lord,” Amelia stammered, her cheeks darkening to an alarming shade of red.

Valentine stifled a sigh. Of course he would end up seated next to the daughter of a minister. Lucifer was laughing at him again, but after last night he supposed he deserved it. Bedding the virginal sister of his best friend when he was supposed to be protecting her. It had to be among the lowest things he’d ever done.

“Deverill. Saw you at the park this morning,” Noleville said, his own tone rather gruff.

Noleville was rather stiff as well, Valentine recalled.

Wonderful. All this because he wanted a glimpse of Eleanor, when he might simply have called on one of her brothers at their house and avoided having to spend at least the next hour between the holier-than-thou duo.

Now that he was trapped, however, he might as well have a little fun with the circumstances. “Yes, I saw you as well,” he replied to Roger. “Driving with Lady Eleanor, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Yes, I was.”

“Courting her, are you?”

Roger blinked. “That’s a bit personal, don’t you think?”

It probably was, and it certainly wasn’t his usual roundabout way of finding out information. As he asked the question, though, he’d felt that wrench inside his gut sim-Sin and Sensibility / 253

ilar to what he’d experienced when he’d first seen Eleanor sitting in another man’s curricle. “I’m a family friend.”

“So she said. In fact, she even defended your behavior toward the Mandelay sisters.”

“What behavior?” Valentine countered, stiffening a little. “We were chatting, I believe.”

“I don’t wish to argue with you, my lord. But neither can I condone a single gentleman accosting young, unes-corted females in public.”

“You—”

“Deverill,” Shay called from the head of the table, “who was it that sold you Iago?”

Valentine took a breath.
Be calm
, he told himself. He hadn’t come to begin a fight with anyone. And besides, given Noleville’s lack of imagination, he doubted Eleanor could seriously look at the young man as a suitor. “I didn’t purchase him,” he said in a more carrying voice. “I won him in a hand of ecarte. From Wellington.”

From the murmur that ran along both sides of the table, several of the guests were surprised that the Duke of Wellington played ecarte—much less that he ever lost.

Given his skill at strategy, however, the duke was a surprisingly poor gambler. And Valentine had badly wanted the half-mad Iago.

Before Noleville or someone else could then accuse him of cheating the duke or some other nonsense, footmen brought out the next course, the apparently famous aforementioned dessert. It looked like raspberries in melted chocolate with some sort of cream topping. Tentatively he raised a spoonful to his mouth and looked up to see whether anyone else had already tasted the concoc-tion.

Pale gray eyes met his from down the length of the table. Valentine stopped, the spoon halfway to his mouth, 254 / Suzanne Enoch

and tried to interpret the look she gave him. He expected anger or remorse, or more pleasantly lust, but unless he was mistaken, she was disappointed.

In him?
Why, in God’s name? His performance last night had been exceptional, if he did say so himself, and she knew him well enough to be unsurprised by both his tardiness and his halfhearted flirtation with the Mandelay twins in the park. If they weren’t so chatty and simpering he might have pursued the conversation more seriously, but even before he’d sighted Eleanor, his heart simply hadn’t been in it.

Holding her gaze, he took a bite of dessert. Not bad, but hardly worthy of the fame Shay accorded it. But now he had something more significant to contemplate, anyway. He needed a word with Eleanor. Yes, he was supposed to be guarding her, and he was doing a damned poor job of that, but she couldn’t possibly be contemplating settling into matrimony just because he’d provided her with a swimming and a lovemaking session. And she certainly couldn’t be serious about marrying someone as stuffy and dull as Roger Noleville. And she had the nerve to be disappointed in
him
.

Directly following dessert, the ladies abandoned the table, going to gossip or embroider or whatever it was they did when no men were present. The butler brought around a box of fine cigars and some port, while Valentine rose to seat himself beside Shay.

“What the devil are you doing here?” Eleanor’s brother whispered, lifting his glass to cover his words. “I’m only in attendance because Nell requested an escort.”

“I have a duty, if you’ll recall,” Valentine pointed out, grateful for once that Melbourne had wrangled him into this fiasco. Otherwise he would have to be admitting some

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rather troubling things to himself, such as the fact that he hadn’t liked seeing Eleanor in another man’s company today, and that whatever look she’d given him earlier bothered him.

“I would think this would be considered a ‘safe’ outing.

I’m here, at any rate.”

“Well, I didn’t know that, now did I?” Valentine lied.

“How many times do I have to tell your brother to send me a note?”

Charlemagne chuckled. “At least the dessert was worth the trip.”

Valentine took a breath. It was the best opening he was likely to receive. “Speaking of dessert, Nell didn’t eat much of it. Is she feeling well?”

“She’s swamped with suitors,” her brother replied, humor still in his voice. “I don’t think she had any idea that calling off her guards would open the floodgates like this.

Three this morning, and four more after luncheon, all just coming by in the hope that she’ll grant them a few moments so they can charm her into matrimony.”

“Seven in one day?”

Her brother nodded. “Truth be told, if they weren’t so obviously the dregs, I’d be concerned. But I know she’d never settle for one of them.”

“Is she looking seriously toward anyone at all?”

“Not as far as I can tell. She doesn’t talk to me much, though. I’ve become one of the enemy.”

“Men?”

“Her brother.”

“I think she’ll come around, Shay,” Valentine supplied.

“She just wants a chance to experience new things before she settles down.”

“Aren’t you enlightened tonight? What brought that 256 / Suzanne Enoch

on?” Charlemagne reached over and felt of Valentine’s forehead. “Are you well?”

Valentine knocked his hand away. “I have moments of clarity which surprise even me. This is simply one of them.”

That had been close. Yes, he and Eleanor were friends, but he absolutely didn’t want to give any of her brothers the tiniest clue that he’d been doing more than keeping an eye on her.

Lord Hennessy began some bawdy tale about a milk-maid and a baron. He claimed it was all true, but considering that if turned inside out the chit’s gown would have been nearly impossible to fasten, Valentine didn’t believe a word of it. Stating his disbelief aloud, however, would have meant sitting through the explanation and everyone else’s opinions on the manner, and he wanted to be elsewhere. Only when the men were finished with their idiotic gossiping would they join the ladies in the drawing room.

Of course he really didn’t need to talk in depth with Eleanor; he merely wanted to know what that look had been about, and to be certain that she had no interest in Noleville. After all, until Melbourne called off the hunt, he still had an obligation to look after her.

“Shall we join the ladies, then?” Lord Goldsborough finally said around a belch. “Don’t want them forgetting us.”

“Thank God,” Valentine muttered, pushing to his feet.

Shay chuckled. “You need more practice at spending time in civilized settings.”

“No, I don’t. I need to spend less time there. Then it won’t bother me.”

“You’re hopeless.”

“So I’ve been told.”

When they entered the drawing room the ladies were all

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laughing about something. As long as it wasn’t he, he didn’t much care, but Eleanor was smiling as well. He slowed, gazing at her. It was so odd. Until a few weeks ago he’d never thought of her as more than the sibling of a friend, a child he’d known for years and one he would classify more as a pet than a female, not that he had much respect for either.

But then they’d engaged in an actual conversation—several of them, in fact, and he hadn’t known what to make of things. He did know he’d enjoyed the time he spent with her, but that certainly hadn’t led to anything good.

Enjoyable, yes, but not good.

Lady Goldsborough lurched to her feet as he entered the room. “Lord Deverill, there’s a seat next to Lady Wendermere,” the countess exclaimed, gesturing at the old bat.

“So there is,” he agreed, taking the chair beside Eleanor.

“You should have sat with Lady Wendermere,” Eleanor murmured. “She’s hard of hearing and could use some charming company.”

“Then someone else can be charming. I’m not the only damned man present, and I prefer my conversations to have two sides.”

He wanted to ask how she was, whether she had any regrets about last night. Asking, though, would mean staying to hear the answers—and he was quite certain he didn’t want to do that.

“I was surprised to see you wander in here this evening,”

she continued in a low voice, while the other guests ca-joled Lady Goldsborough into sitting at the pianoforte for a tune or two.

Valentine shrugged. “Seemed as good a place as any to get a meal.”

“So it had nothing to do with me?”

258 / Suzanne Enoch

For a moment he just looked at her. Eleanor preferred being direct; he knew that about her. He generally preferred it himself, but not tonight. “Should it have?” he asked.

“No, I suppose not.”

“I mean, I flipped a coin,” he lied, “about whether to venture here or to the Stewart soiree. The Stewarts actually won, but then I recalled that their only offspring are two unmarried daughters with large feet. Hence my presence here.”

“I see.” She looked away, toward the group of guests gathered around the pianoforte. “Might I ask you a question?” she said slowly.

Valentine hid a grimace. “Yes.”

“Did last night mean anything to you?”

Damnation
. “Last night? Of course it meant something.

It was quite pleasant, you are exceptionally lovely, and I hadn’t been swimming in a very long time.” He almost added that he wouldn’t mind repeating the experience, but restrained himself at the last moment.

“Swimming is the thing you hadn’t done in a while,”

she repeated. “The other is more frequent.”

“I’ve never made a secret of that, Eleanor,” he returned, a creeping unease shivering along his spine. God, she couldn’t be jealous. He didn’t want her to be jealous—but neither did he want to discuss last night any further. “How was your drive with Roger Noleville this morning?”

“How was your chat with the Mandelay sisters?” she retorted.

“Dull as dirt,” he said smoothly, “but it passed the time.”

She gazed at him. “So there was nothing you would rather have been doing?”

He didn’t know whether she was looking to comment on

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his lack of usefulness or whether she wanted a simple compliment. Either one meant admitting to something he wasn’t quite ready to confess to, but neither was he prepared to tolerate that disappointed look of hers. “The thing I would rather have been doing wasn’t possible, since you were unavailable.”

Eleanor blinked. “Oh. So you—”

“Yes, I would. You, however, made a stipulation, and I will honor it.”

“Then it’s just on to the next chit for you?”

As if he could get Eleanor out of his thoughts long enough to call on anyone. This conversation was becoming a little too personal—and a little too close to encouraging him toward self-reflection. “Eleanor, I’m not the one who wanted to change any part of my life. That was you. And if there’s more you wish to do, I’ll be happy to oblige. But don’t expect that I will alter an inch. I’m quite happy with my life as it is.”

“You mean to say that you’re happy with complete frivolity and never making any more than a brief physical connection with anyone,” she said, her tone still quiet.

“That’s none of your damned affair. And besides, you’re the one who said ‘one night only.’” He stood, still careful to keep his voice lowered. “Don’t expect me to become a bloody monk or something, just because—”

“Excuse me,” she said, rising as well. “But if you don’t mind,
I
need to face some responsibilities and make some serious decisions about my future. Your determination to be frivolous is giving me an aching head.”

“You’re giving me an aching head,” he shot back. “Insult me if it makes you feel better, my dear, but spend a little time looking at yourself in the mirror. I think you might just find that you envy me more than you disapprove of me.”