Taming Beauty (6 page)

Who knew children were such interesting little people? Certainly, Lilith had never before known it, or even suspected or contemplated it one way or another.

Odd, the things one learned in the wilds of Cornwall.

Odder still, the things one never wanted to learn in the wilds of Cornwall.

“What do you mean the mail coach doesn’t come through Breckenridge?”

“My boy, Tom can ride to Brideford with your missive,” Mr. Poole, innkeeper-cum-smithy, offered with a nod to the strapping young man working the bellows at the forge. “Course he can’t go ‘til tomorrow, seeing as I’ll need him here today. But if he leaves at first light he can meet the mail coach, hand it off and it’ll reach London midweek, weather permitting.”

“Midweek?” Lilith repeated, tapping the sealed letter on the edge of the counter upon which sat piles of metalwork in various stages of completion.

“Course, it’ll cost you a pretty penny.” Mr. Poole swept his rheumy gaze from Lilith’s artfully tussled curls to the tips of her kid-skin boots, now more brown than white. “But you’ve the look of a lady with a few pennies to spare, and all of them pretty.”

Lilith couldn’t decide if the old man was flirting with her or insulting her, another oddity for a woman who prided herself on spotting a flirt before he’d opened his mouth to deliver the first salvo. The not knowing left her feeling all topsy-turvy and out of sorts. “Damn and blast,” she muttered before turning to find the boys digging through a pile of discarded horseshoes on the other side of the dimly-lit building.

“You wouldn’t be Lord Malleville’s bride, would you?” Mr. Poole asked with a chuckle.

“Me, Malleville’s bride?” Lilith replied with a laugh. “Not bloody likely.”

“I only ask on account of I heard as how his lordship is to marry an earl’s eldest daughter, a lady rumored to be as pretty as the day is long. And Cornish days are longer than most.”

On surer footing, Lilith leaned one hip against the counter and offered up a smile. “Why, Mr. Poole, you’ve a rake’s heart hiding under that apron, haven’t you?”

“Don’t pay no mind to him,” called out a cheerful, feminine voice as a trio of women entered the smithy dressed in their Sunday best. “Flirting comes as easy to him as breathing, but he’s harmless.”

Mr. Poole didn’t so much a blush as he introduced his wife, her mother Mrs. Carter, and Miss Sarah Parkhurst. Finally, a bit of luck to offset an otherwise unlucky morning.

“Well, land sakes, aren’t you a pretty little thing?” Mrs. Poole exclaimed, taking hold of Lilith’s hand and squeezing. “Miss Lilith Aberdeen, you say? Are you any relation to Viscount Aberdeen?”

“Only very distantly.” Lilith gently disentangled her finger from the lady’s grasp.

“I saw the viscount once,” Mrs. Carter said, beaming a smile missing a goodly number of teeth. “In London, it was, years ago, before you were born, I’d wager.”

“I seem to recall Rose making mention of a Miss Aberdeen in one of her letters,” Miss Sarah Parkhurst said, her gaze taking in Lilith’s gown and shawl and likely marking the cost down to the last pretty penny. “For the life of me I cannot remember what she wrote.”

“I did have the opportunity to become acquainted with your sister this past winter when she was in Town shopping for her…” Lilith allowed her lips to form the word
trousseau
though not so much as a breath of air escaped.

Truly, it ought to require a bit more effort, rattling the composure of a girl of perhaps seven and ten. Surely Lilith herself hadn’t been so blasted easy to unsettle at her age.

“Now I remember.” The girl on the cusp of womanhood couldn’t help but rush to fill the awkward silence that followed the one unspoken word. “Rose wrote she’d met you in Hyde Park.”

“Actually, it was at the theater,” Lilith contradicted, suspecting she was about to ruin the poor girl’s day, if not her entire week. “On opening night of Much Ado about Nothing. In the Earl of Dunaway’s box.”

A mottled flush swept over the girl’s cheeks right up to her hairline. Pale brows took flight above blinking hazel eyes.

“Are you acquainted with the Earl of Dunaway?” Mrs. Carter asked, oblivious to the younger lady’s mortification. Proving, once again, that not all of the London gossip had the strength to make the journey to Cornwall.

“But of course,” cried Mrs. Poole. “You must be here for the wedding!”

“She ain’t the bride,” Mr. Poole said. “Not that she ain’t pretty enough to snare a fine man like Lord Malleville.”

“Hush, Mr. Poole,” his wife ordered good-naturedly. “Are you a cousin of some sort to the bride, then?”

Lilith took a deep breath, perspiration beading along her temples and sprouting on her nape as she prepared to utter words she’d rarely allowed herself to think, let alone speak.

“Miss Aberdeen is the bride’s sister.” Miss Sarah saved Lilith both the breath and the bother. “The Earl of Dunaway’s daughter by that woman, the one who rode through Hyde Park in the altogether.”

“Lady Godiva?” asked Mrs. Carter in obvious confusion.

“I believe Miss Sarah is referring to Gwendolyn Aberdeen,” Lilith said with a laugh. “Good Lord, do you know I’d nearly forgotten that old tale about my mother galloping through the morning mist.”

Mrs. Carter gasped and fell back a step, one pudgy hand coming up to rest over her heart as if the organ were in danger of leaping right out of her bosom.

Mrs. Poole, oddly enough, shot a smile at her husband who was grinning from ear to ear.

Miss Sarah had the good grace to feign surprise, as if the words had simply slipped from her lips without forethought. And perhaps they had. That or she ought to take to the stage.

“I’m dreadfully sorry,” the girl whispered, all that splotchy pink washing from her cheeks to leave her face as white as parchment.

“You needn’t apologize for speaking the truth,” Lilith assured her with a shrug of one shoulder, her shawl slipping down her arm. “Although you might want to beg Mrs. Carter’s pardon for shocking the daylights out of her. And on Sunday, no less.”

“Speaking of Sunday, we’d best be on our way,” Mrs. Poole said, patting Miss Sarah’s hand as if in sympathy for the blundering trip she’d taken down the path Lilith had laid out for her. “Else there’ll be no flowers in the church.”

“I don’t suppose you’re a churchgoer?” Mrs. Carter asked doubtfully.

“I’ve been known to step over the threshold of a church or two,” Lilith replied, not altogether untruthfully. She attended mass at the little Catholic church in Bloomsbury with Alabaster from time to time.

“Reverend Hopper begins services promptly at ten of the clock,” Mrs. Poole said.

Lilith gave a regal nod as if she might, just might, deign to join the ladies in worship.

And perhaps she would, if for no other reason than to determine how speedily scandal spread on a stiff, Cornish breeze.

But not before she had a bite to eat.

Wreaking havoc and mayhem in order to save an earl’s daughter from not-quite-certain doom was hungry work, after all.

So it was that Baron Malleville happened upon Lilith in the public room of the inn some thirty minutes later.

Though it was unlikely mere happenstance brought him plowing through the door without benefit of waistcoat, cravat or jacket. Nor was it Lilith his dark gaze searched for as he dragged one hand through his hair, mussing the wavy locks and leaving them standing up every which way.

Still, after he’d marked the boys’ whereabouts and his gaze finally landed upon her, Lilith realized she’d been waiting for him to find her.

“Uncle Jasper!” Charlie and Henry chorused, the former scooting his chair back so he was no longer all but sitting in her lap while the latter leapt to his feet and charged across the room.

Malleville caught the boy as he launched himself into the air from a good two feet away, hauling him up to dangle over his shoulder. As naturally as if little bodies came flying at him from all directions at any given moment.

“We hitched a ride on the back of Lilith’s carriage!” Charlie called out across the otherwise empty pub. “You shoulda’ seen us. We snuck up without even the footman noticing.”

“Not even the footman,” Henry said, his words mumbled against his uncle’s back.

“Perhaps you ought not to hang the boy upside down,” Lilith suggested. “He’s only just polished off a plate of kippers and coddled eggs and washed it down with Mr. Poole’s pale ale.”

“You gave Henry ale?” Malleville demanded.

“I hardly held him on the floor and forced it down his throat,” Lilith protested, smiling in the face of his irritation. Honestly, the man was too handsome when he sulked. “And it was only half a pint.”

“I had the other half,” Charlie added. “And oysters. Lilith said as how her great-grandmother ate oysters every morning and she lived to be nearly ninety.”

“And had lovely skin until the day she keeled over.” Henry lifted his head and squirmed about to look around his uncle’s bulk, gifting Lilith with a grin.

“I never said Eve Marie keeled over,” Lilith said. “She died quite peacefully in her sleep.”

“In whose bed?” Malleville asked, his words faintly snarled, and Lilith was struck by the sudden suspicion he was amused, perhaps even attempting to hold back laughter.

“Do you know, I never thought to inquire,” she replied, though she knew full well Eve Marie had died in her own silk and velvet draped bed. Quite alone but for her daughters, granddaughters and great-granddaughters. “I’ll have to ask Alabaster when next I see her.”

Malleville’s lips twitched before he drew them into a firm line, his jaw clamping tight. But the humor was there in his eyes, glowing quicksilver as they traced her face, lingering for a beat on her lips.

Lilith smiled, slow and sweet, for the sheer pleasure of watching his chest rise and his nostrils flare as he drew in a breath.

“Come along, Charlie,” Malleville ordered with a nod to the door. “Your father’s just outside. How we’ll explain your attire is anyone’s guess, but if you’re lucky we can make it to church before your mother realizes you’ve gone missing.”

“The boys haven’t been missing,” Lilith said. “They’ve been with me the entire time.”

“Hanging off the back of your carriage.”

“It’s not as if I knew the little monsters were there.”

“And I suppose it never occurred to you that boys of seven and eight do not drink ale with their coddled eggs.”

“How should I know how old they are?” Lilith asked. “Besides, Charlie said his father allows them each half a pint from time to time.”

“And little boys never lie to get what they want?” Malleville asked.

“I couldn’t say, as this is as near to little boys as I’ve ever been,” she admitted, enjoying herself immensely.

“Except for mudlarks and chimneysweeps,” Charlie piped up.

Lilith looked past Malleville’s broad form and caught Henry’s eye, mouthing the words “Mudlarks and chimneysweeps” right along with him, sending both boys into convulsions of laughter.

Lilith grinned at Malleville, causing him to take one step back as if she might pounce on him and tackle him to the floor.

“Let’s go, Charlie.”

Charlie dragged his feet the entire way across the room, casting one last mournful look over his shoulder as his uncle ruffled his hair and herded him out the door. It was a gentle touch, fraught with tender care, and one so at odds with the baron’s gruff demeanor and brawny strength Lilith’s heart gave a queer leap.

Just before the door swung shut, Henry looked up and smiled, his face beet red from hanging upside down.

“Is he gone, then?” Agnes Poole poked her head out from the kitchen.

“Why did you scamper away when Lord Malleville arrived?” Lilith asked as the pretty, dark-haired girl made her way across the pub which now seemed absurdly quiet and empty without the two boys and their quarrelsome uncle filling the space.

“His lordship makes me nervous.”

“In a good way or a bad way?”

“Both, I suppose,” Agnes admitted, ducking her head and smiling.

“I know precisely how you feel.”

Lilith sank back into her chair before the table littered with the remnants of the best breakfast she had enjoyed in years. Since she was a very small girl and Dunaway had lived mostly at Gwendolyn’s house, traveling from Hanover from Grosvenor Square only to make sporadic attempts to beget an heir.

“Well, what are you waiting for, woman?”

Lilith looked up to find Malleville standing in the open doorway glaring at her.

“Are you speaking to me in that surly tone?”

“Who else would I be speaking to?”

“Agnes, have you had the pleasure of meeting Baron Malleville, formerly known to everyone outside the family as Grim?” Lilith asked of the girl slowly backing away toward the kitchen.

“Good morning, my lord,” Agnes whispered, dropping a quick, clumsy curtsy.

“Miss Poole.” Malleville gave a sharp nod in acknowledgment. “Let’s go, Lilith.”

“Where, precisely, do you think I ought to be going with you?” Lilith asked.

“Church, where else?”

Agnes looked from Lilith to Malleville and back again, clearly perplexed by their banter masquerading as hostility.

“It’s quite all right,” Lilith assured the girl. “We’re almost family, brother and sister, even.”

Malleville grimaced, and Lilith couldn’t help but laugh.

“Hurry, already,” he ordered, stepping back and holding the door open. “Before we’re late.”

“You’d best go,” Agnes said earnestly. “The reverend does like to poke fun at stragglers. Not that he’d dare poke fun at his lordship.”

“But you’ll be free game.”

“That’s quite all right as I don’t mind a poke now and again, just for fun.” Lilith slowly walked across the public room, all too aware of the man’s gaze on the sway of her hips.

“Don’t get any ideas,” Malleville said, his voice a delicious low rumble.

Lilith brushed by him, pausing outside to blink against the bright sunlight.

“Can you not move any faster?” he all but barked.

“It is not a question of whether I can but rather whether I will.”

“And?”

“I am averse to over-exerting myself in this heat.”

“I ought to toss you over my shoulder and carry you,” Malleville grumbled.

“I dare you.”

“You’d like that wouldn’t you?”

“I would actually.”

Two elderly women caught sight of Lilith and Jasper walking along the dirt lane that wound alongside the river and stopped to stare. A bit farther up ahead a gaggle of girls watched their approach from the foot of the bridge, their heads bent close as they whispered and giggled behind their hands.

“How long have you been in the village?” Malleville asked, nodding to the old ladies as they passed.

“Oh, perhaps two hours.”

“Just long enough to hang out the wash,” he muttered.

“I’ve not waved around so much as a chemise,” she protested with a laugh.

“Why is it I don’t believe you?”

“Honestly, I’ve been on my very best behavior.”

“That’s what has me worried.”

“Good gracious, what sort of shop is this?” Lilith turned to peer through the window of a narrow shop crammed with all manner of goods and wares. Books and bottles, painted flower pots and porcelain figurines, toys and tin canisters, sacks of flour and jugs of whiskey crowded the shelves lining the walls. Garden rakes, walking sticks, parasols and rifles canoodled in every corner. Shawls and ribbons, wool trousers and bolts of velvet, lengths of watered silk and strings of glass beads hung from the ceiling rafters.

“Have you never seen a mercantile?” He stopped beside Lilith and though she couldn’t take her eyes from the shop’s shadowy interior, she felt his gaze on her, skating over her profile.

“Why, a person could buy anything they’ve a mind to own from this one little shop,” Lilith said, not bothering to hide her wonder. “No traipsing to one shop for table linens, another for candles and still another for… Is that a ready-made gown on that dressmaker’s mannequin in the back?”

From somewhere across the river and behind them, a bell tolled.

“Damn, we’re going to be late,” he murmured, his hand wrapping around her wrist as if he meant to bodily tug her away from the wondrous shop.

Only he didn’t tug at all, but rather slid his hand down and brushed his fingertips over the back of her hand, traced the knobby ridges of her knuckles once, twice. His thumb coasted over the sensitive skin on the underside of her wrist where her pulse throbbed, echoing the thunderous beat of her heart.

Lord, his hand was so big and warm, his touch unbearably gentle.

Then both were gone as he released her wrist as suddenly as he’d taken hold of it. “We’ve only nine more tolls of the bell before the church doors close.”

Following him when he turned away, she trailed him across the bridge and back the way they’d come on the other side of the river. Every dozen steps or so he paused and glanced back, waiting until she’d nearly caught up with him, before moving off again. Just out of reach.

He turned off the lane onto a narrow path bordered by high, stone walls. The echo of the ninth toll faded away into a silence broken only by the surge of the river, the occasional bird chirping and from a great distance away the frenzied barking of a dog.

Lilith felt rather like Lord Malleville’s shadow, always there but rarely acknowledged. It was a melancholy thought and deeply troubling as it smacked of self-pity and she refused to feel such a useless emotion.

When he disappeared beneath an ivy covered archway, she was tempted to turn around and retrace her steps to the inn where Reggie waited with Dunaway’s carriage. She could retrieve the missive from Mr. Poole and be back at Breckenridge inside of an hour, pack up her belongings and be on the road to London inside of three.

Malleville ought not to have laid his hand on her, not in so gentle a fashion. The touch had scattered her wits and she’d yet to collect them enough to remember why it was so imperative she stop a wedding that would, in all likelihood, result in a marriage no better or worse than any other alliance forged by financial and societal considerations.

Lilith trailed one hand through the ivy as she turned under the arch, stopping on the edge of a vast field of daffodils. It was as if the sun had exploded, showering the meadow with bursts of yellow light, so bright she had no choice but to look away lest she be rendered blind.

The church itself was ancient, weathered gray stones of indiscriminate size all piled atop one another like a jigsaw puzzle designed to addle the mind of anyone foolish enough to attempt to solve it. A three-story, crenellated tower dwarfed the chapel, the old, wood-plank doors shut though the windows on either side had been left open in light of the heat already climbing though it was only mid-morning.

From those open windows, dozens of voiced raised in song floated across the churchyard, carried on the same breeze which set thousands of daffodils swaying and shimmying.

Lilith wasn’t prone to whimsical notions, but it seemed to her as if the flowers were dancing to the melody of all those Cornish voices raised to belt out an unfamiliar hymn.

Smiling, she looked about for Malleville and found him wandering between the headstones of a graveyard situated to the left and a bit behind the church. Taking a twisting path through the daffodils, she entered the cemetery and wound her way through the tombstones until she came up beside him.

“Do you suppose one must be a member of this church in order to be buried here?” Lilith asked. “Or would Reverend Hopper allow anyone to be laid to rest in his churchyard for the right price?”

“As he’s a man of God, I like to think he cannot be bribed,” he replied without looking up from the headstone in front of which he’d stopped.

Lilith followed his gaze.

Edward Cornelius Grimley, Eighth Baron Malleville, 1750 – 1801

Edith Anne Lennox Grimley, Baroness Malleville, 1748 – 1800