Sinful in Satin (16 page)

“Mr. Albrighton. What a coincidence to find you here too.”

“It is an uncommonly fair day for the season,” he said. “I decided it should not be wasted. It appears we think alike.”

“Either we do, or you followed me here.”

“Why would I do that?” He swung off his horse and came over to her, wearing a charming smile and leading his mount by the reins.

“Not a denial, I see, but one of your dodges.”

She walked away. He fell into step. She let him know with a sharp glance and deep sigh that she did not want his company. He ignored her.

“I did follow you,” he said. “I knew you could less easily avoid me in this public place than in your own home. That is what you have been doing, isn’t it? Avoiding me?”

“You are more conceited than I thought if you believe that.”

“Which is not to say it is not true. I am not the only one who dodges.”

She stopped walking and faced him. “Yes, I have been avoiding you. I was not myself that day. I find your presence awkward now. Furthermore, I have come here to think over some matters of great concern to me, and not to entertain your company.”

“Are you saying you regret that passion, Celia? If so, I will respect that, and apologize again for taking advantage of you.”

She sighed at his persistence. He looked on her too kindly, and too seriously, for a clever retort to be fair. A handsome man, she thought, as she always did. Exciting. The sensual euphoria she had experienced with him had not been far from her thoughts these last three days, for all her confusion and embarrassment. Now it was in the air between them, subdued but present still.

“I was taught that regret is for fools, so it cannot be that, can it? But I know that there can never be any story between us.”

He did not argue that last point. Of course not. She walked on. She did not have to spell it out for such a man. He would go away now. Maybe he would leave the house for good. That would be best.

That thought made her hollow inside, and a little sad. She scolded herself for that reaction. What a stupid girl she could still be sometimes.

She had progressed several hundred feet when his boots again found a pace beside her. His horse snorted behind them while they strolled in the sunlight.

“What matter of concern do you contemplate, if it is not me?” he asked.

“I am pondering my future, and how careless I have been with the lives of others for whom I have taken responsibility. I have discovered that there is a debt outstanding that may undo all that I have tried to accomplish. As a result, my independence may prove to be very short-lived.”

“Have you been sneaking off to gamble, Celia? If not, I cannot believe this debt can be very big.”

“I am sure it is bigger than I can repay. I learned that my mother owed Anthony Dargent a great deal of money, and if that debt is not settled, I am sure to lose the house.”

 

 

C
elia strode along and retreated into her consideration of this newly discovered debt. She displayed no ill ease being with him, for all her claims of awkwardness. Jonathan was glad for that.

There can be no story between us
. He was fairly sure he knew what she meant by that. Her mother’s training had taught her to view the world without mercy in this regard. He could be excused for wishing she were less sensible.

The path split up ahead. She encouraged their steps to take the direction less trod by others. He waited to see if, having sought some privacy, she would confide the rest about that debt.

“When my year in London with my mother was ending, she sought to arrange for my first protector. Perhaps you know about this,” she said, as if answering his query when in fact he had asked nothing.

He knew. All the younger men of society knew, and more than a few like himself who collected at its edges. Edward had been accurate in saying Alessandra had teased the ton for months with Celia’s imminent launch.

Alessandra had guessed he did not approve, and had in turn teased him about his scruples. It had seemed a sin to him to send a girl into that life when she was so fresh and innocent. Her mother had explained—patiently, considering she spoke to a young man about nothing of his concern—that it was the freshness and innocence that would ensure Celia’s triumph.

“I knew about her intentions regarding you, yes.”

“Well, Anthony was the one chosen. That was how that horrible conversation with him started. The one right before I left my mother’s house. He was telling me with great glee that she had given her nod. That was how I found out that he did not intend marriage at all.”

He had not known Dargent had been chosen. Celia’s comments after Dargent left the other day made more sense now, and took on more meaning. However—

“He has wealth enough, but I would have expected her to choose a peer for you, or an heir to a title.”

“She would have preferred that, but she firmly believed that I should have a voice in it. She knew I loved him, so she accepted his proposition, which was a very generous one.”

“It was convenient that you loved one of the appropriate candidates. I assume that she would have never accommodated your voice if you had fallen in love with a man lacking great expectations.”

“Alessandra had many months to explain why, whether it be a lover or a patron, it could never be someone with no fortune.”

Which, of course, was one reason there could be no story between the two of them.

“When Anthony visited me the other day, he said those negotiations had progressed much further than I imagined. He claimed to have given Alessandra my first two years’ allowance, in advance.”

“Did she return it when you left?”

“He says not.”

“So this is the debt that troubles you, I gather.”

She nodded. “I should have waited, I suppose, to begin with the plants. I should have definitely waited before giving Marian and Bella a home. Now I either lose the house when he makes a claim against Alessandra’s estate, or I involve them in a life other than I promised. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

“Are you convincing yourself that you have no choice except to work off that debt?”

He regretted his sharp tone as soon as it was out, but her little debate infuriated him. He resented the way she had made him a party to it, as if he had no right to mind. Which he didn’t, but that did not mean he liked this. He could almost hear her mind weighing, judging, and all the while coming to very practical conclusions indeed.

She stopped walking, stung. “I am trying to determine what my choices are, both the good and the bad.”

He’d be damned before he allowed her to talk herself into going to that fool. “I wonder if you truly comprehend the good and bad of what he is offering. Security, yes. Luxury even. A better house and more servants and even a type of status in his world. I am sure your mother explained all of that.”

“She did little else.”

“Did she also explain what happens when the silks are removed and you are a man’s sexual slave?”

She glared at him. “I am hardly ignorant. Alessandra did not fail that part of my education. She taught me how to keep matters dignified.”

He almost laughed. Of course Alessandra had not been too specific about what happened when things went very wrong. “You asked for my advice. Well, hear me now, as you debate your choices. There will be men who will encourage your illusion that you are in control of matters, because they anticipate the pleasure they will have in breaking you. Not all gentlemen are gentlemen in this area. Just so you know.”

“Thank you for the lesson,
Mr. Albrighton
.” She turned and walked away, retracing their route.

He easily caught up with her. He bore her brittle silence and told himself he had not been so blunt for his own purposes, but only to warn her.

Except it had been in part for his own purposes. The thought of her going to Dargent—willingly, no less—made him want to kill the man.

He marshaled his next argument to dissuade her from feeling any obligation for this debt. Before he could speak, a little drama began unfolding in front of them. A woman he recognized was walking toward them on the path. Tall and dark-haired, she wore a green promenade ensemble with a fur-trimmed mantlet over its velvet pelisse. A more humbly dressed woman accompanied her; a maid, from the looks of it.

The dark-haired woman stopped in her tracks at the sight of Celia and him. She immediately looked down at the muddy grass on either side of the path as if seeking a quick escape. Realizing that leaving the promenade was unwise, she straightened her back and continued on, wearing a face of stone.

Jonathan took unseemly pleasure in closing the space between them. He caught the eye of the woman despite her best efforts to avoid it. In response she looked right at him and Celia, then tossed her head dramatically as she walked past, her nose pointing to the clouds.

Celia flushed deeply, but a steely glint entered her eyes. She did not speak again until he had returned her to her cabriolet.

“Your advice on my problem is well-taken, Mr. Albrighton, even if I thought it an unnecessary lesson, such as one might give a child.”

“It was not my intention to speak to you as a child, but as a woman adding up future gains and costs.”

“Then that lady’s direct cut was not fortuitous to your purposes, reminding me as it did that I am paying costs while receiving
no
gains.”

He handed her up, then swung onto his mount. “That cut was not aimed at you. She probably does not have any idea who you are.”

“Are you saying she was being deliberately rude—to you? Do you know her?”

“I know her well enough. That was my cousin.”

 

 

“I
am curious about something, Uncle,” Jonathan said. “It may bear on my search.”

They sat in Edward’s library, in front of a fire that toasted their boots. Edward’s wife had retired after dinner, as she always did when Jonathan visited. She could not refuse her husband his demand that she entertain Jonathan, but she did not extend herself beyond the formalities, which, while she was present, remained very formal indeed. Long ago she must have decided that staying in Thornridge’s good graces was more important than staying in her husband’s.

Jonathan did not much care. The very private meals mattered to him far less than the conversations after them. Edward was hardly the warm family that Jonathan had yearned for as a boy, but Edward was all there really was.

“What would that be?” Edward asked, reaching over to pour more port.

“Anthony Dargent. What do you know of him?”

Edward shrugged. “Good family out of the Midlands. Lots of money. His grandfather dabbled in more trade than he ever admitted and stuffed the coffers. Wool. Cotton. Slaves too, probably. Dargent is probably worth seven thousand a year.”

More than enough to keep a mistress in style. Alessandra had expected a princely sum for Celia, and there were few young men who could afford that.
She believed I should have a voice in it,
Celia had said. How convenient to Alessandra, and potentially fortunate to Celia, that the one she wanted could actually afford her mother’s demands.

He wondered if Alessandra had intended to keep that allowance for herself all along. More likely not. When her daughter had left, it probably just leaked away as time went on.

“Is there any trouble attached to his name?” he asked.

“None that I know. He is a good-natured fellow, suitably boring and stable. He married the daughter of an equally good, boring fellow, who in turn had married the sister of a viscount. So I suppose Dargent rose up a bit in the world with that.”

“And his father? Was he also good and boring?”

“Less so.” Edward lit a cigar and watched its smoke drift. “But it is not what you think.”

Jonathan did not think anything yet. Damned if he was going to tell Edward that. “You are sure?”

“His father was very religious. Unusually so. The idea that he may have had some kind of liaison with Mrs. Northrope is absurd.”

Jonathan had never had that idea. Clearly someone had, however, so now it became an interesting line of thought. “He was busy in the government during the war? The father, that is.”

“Informally. He had spent three years in France as a young man, acting like some kind of missionary to French peasants who were none too willing to listen. They already had their priests for that, didn’t they? But he learned the lay of the land very well in certain provinces. The army would consult with him now and then. You know the sort of questions: Does this river flood in spring? Is this line on the map a good enough road to move cannon?” He shrugged. “Nothing dramatic.”

Except those questions might give some indication of the army’s potential movements. The army asked twenty questions to learn the answer to one, in order to bury the true interest, but anyone who knew military developments on the Continent could probably decipher which question had mattered.

Dargent’s father may have been too religious to have a liaison with Mrs. Northrope, but the son was not so fastidious about his soul. Perhaps Alessandra had another reason to pair Celia with Dargent besides Celia’s preferences and the young man’s considerable expectations. Maybe she intended her daughter to serve as another pair of ears for those useful tidbits men tended to drop when they were very contented. Alessandra may have even thrown Celia and Dargent together with that end in mind.

“I saw Miranda today,” Jonathan said, leaving one topic for another in the way of chats by the fire.

Edward’s relaxed expression firmed. “Did you? Where?”

“In the park. We almost walked right into each other.”

“Did she acknowledge you?”

“If the cut direct is a form of acknowledgment, then yes.”

“Do not pretend you were surprised, or even truly insulted.”