Taming Beauty (8 page)

God above, he liked the feel of her in his arms.

He could too easily imagine a lifetime spent trading quips with her, cuddling her close, pulling her unique scent into his lungs, listening to her interact with his nieces and nephews, with their own children.

“Stop it, at once.” Lilith’s voice, low and fierce, pulled him away from dreams destined to go unfilled.

“Stop what?” he asked, even as he realized the melody had come to an end and his feet had ceased moving.

“Looking at me that way.”

“What way?”

“As if you would devour me whole.”

He could do it. Toss her over his shoulder and make off with her. Carry her away to his lair and devour her whole. Beginning with her lips and working his way south.

“Unless you want to start a scandal strong enough to carry on a stiff Cornish wind, you will release me this instant,” Lilith hissed.

Which is when Jasper realized he was squeezing her fingers, likely to the point of pain, and coiling his arm around her back to pull her closer.

Jasper released her and took one step back, one unsteady step away from the danger she represented.

“Sissy will not go against Dunaway,” Lilith said, catching his gaze and holding it. “She will not end the betrothal, no matter what you do.”

“End the betrothal?” Jasper repeated stupidly, unable to comprehend her meaning.

“You must be the one to cry off, Malleville,” she hissed. “If you will not do it for Sissy, do it for yourself.”

“I cannot.” He could no longer remember the reason, but he knew it to be true.

“Then may the devil have pity on your soul,” Lilith exclaimed on a huff of exasperation, “for I’ll no longer show you even the slightest measure.”

Lilith had never had occasion to play pall-mall, what with the lamentable dearth of country house parties littering her past.

The game seemed simple enough, hit a ball around the patchy, weed-riddled south lawn, which as luck or hindsight would have it did not face the wall of glass doors leading to Jasper’s study. Aim for the bent and twisted wickets stuck in the ground at angles designed to aggravate a novice player. Finish the course before one’s opponents, all of whom were intent upon knocking her ball clear to the cliffs and into the sea.

“Lord Malleville has proven himself to be quite stubborn.” Lilith raised a mallet that had already imbedded two splinters in her hand and took aim at the ball which might at one time have been painted green but was now merely speckled.

“You aren’t giving up, are you?” Sissy hissed. “You said you would lay waste to the baron’s determination.”

“Yes, well his determination is quite strong.” Lilith aimed for Matthew Grimley’s blue, speckled ball and swung with all her might, smiling as she knocked it beneath a thorny rosebush. Her ball careened toward her next wicket, stopping mere inches from the final, mangled arch.

“Huzzah for Princess Lilith,” Meg Rossiter hollered, jumping up and down on the bench her father had brought around for her to sit quietly upon, thereby not distracting the players.

Lilith wasn’t quite certain how it had come about, but since the children had returned from Church five days past, they’d taken it into their little ginger heads to make a pet of her. Perhaps it was boredom brought on by the four days of almost relentless rain that had kept them indoors. Mayhap it was simply the novelty of a new toy one feels compelled to play with until every last bit of fun is wrested from the thing. Whatever the reason for Lilith’s sudden popularity with the little creatures, she hadn’t had a waking moment to herself in days.

If Meg wasn’t shadowing her from room to room, chattering away about China and lost teeth and worlds spinning off their axes, Charlie and Henry were peppering her with questions about mudlarking along the beach and begging her to ask the cook to serve oysters and ale at breakfast.

And every time she made the mistake of sitting down, little Davie would toddle up to her, climb into her lap, and pet and poke at her with sticky fingers.

Even baby Annie was intent upon commandeering Lilith’s attention, setting up a hue and cry until she finally gave in and took the squiggly little bundle into her arms.

It was proving nearly as difficult to avoid, ignore or otherwise evade the children’s attentions as it was to ruffle Lord Malleville’s auburn feathers.

Not that she’d made more than a token effort on those rare occasions they inhabited the same general vicinity. Which, as his lordship was obviously intent upon pretending she did not exist, was only at dinner.

And then, as if to make up for all the hours between one evening and the next, the man watched her every move, his gaze inexorably fastened upon her, only looking away when not to do so would be a grave offense against even the most lax standard of manners. He spoke not a word to her, merely smiled grimly at each lurid tale she offered up over dinner, all of them starring her various relations. Some of the anecdotes were accurate down to the color of a certain earl’s smalls while others were no more than family lore embellished throughout the years.

There had been no dancing after dinner, no strolling through the village, and Malleville had put in not a single appearance on her balcony overlooking the garden she was coming to think of as her own private jungle. She’d taken to meandering through the hip high weeds and flowers in the morning while she sipped her Turkish coffee, fruitlessly hoping she might spy him standing at the French doors watching her from the safety of his study.

“You’ve done nothing more than tell naughty tales about your mother and grandmother,” Sissy said, her blue eyes blinking furiously. “Who cares if a Prussian prince was found on his knees beneath the table linen at some old lady’s dinner? That is no more than a breach of etiquette, the prince crawling about looking for his fork beneath your grandmother’s skirts when he ought to have had a servant bring him another.”

Lilith rolled her eyes at the girl’s naiveté.

“And that nonsense about your mother riding through Hyde Park altogether unclothed,” Sissy continued, whacking away at her ball with no forethought whatsoever, landing it alongside Matthew’s. “You borrowed the tale, exaggerated the events and added those two doddering old men dueling over her honor.”

“It wasn’t Gwendolyn’s
honor
they were dueling over, nor do her exploits require any exaggeration whatsoever,” Lilith replied. “And I am not the one who trotted out that particular fairytale.”

“My point exactly. You are doing precious little to help me and we’ve only six more days until utter catastrophe.”

“You’ve only six more days,” Lilith corrected, all the while knowing utter catastrophe had come and gone. To the accompaniment of hymns and dancing daffodils. “I shall return to London and step right back into my life.”

“You promised and now you’re just giving up without even truly trying.” Was that a tear hovering on her blonde lashes? How had Dunaway sired so emotional a child, and with the countess, no less?

“Oh, for mercy sake,” Lilith exclaimed. “I only said Lord Malleville is more stubborn than I’d anticipated. I did not say I am giving up.”

“Perhaps if you were to—”

“Do not suggest I seduce the man.”

“Goodness, I would never suggest anything so vile,” Sissy replied. “Truly, I cannot even imagine how you could think of such a thing.”

Lilith might have told her she’d been thinking of little else since she’d arrived at Breckenridge and caught her first glimpse of the wounded beast.

Honestly, how much temptation was a woman raised to be a temptress expected to resist? It had gone against her very nature to remind Malleville of the consequences of kissing her outside a church where his entire family, nay the entire population of his world, might bear witness. And it did not bear thinking about what might have happened had he not finally acquiesced to her demand to be released from the spell he’d woven around them during their waltz.

“Though, perhaps you might flirt with him a bit,” Sissy mused around the nail she was chewing, a habit she shared with Kate. “Get him alone long enough to allow him to steal a kiss or two.”

Only he wouldn’t need to steal a kiss as Lilith would likely beg him for one the moment they were alone. One would lead to another and before either of them quite realized it they’d be rolling around on whatever surface lay nearby. A settee. A desk or table. A daffodil strewn churchyard.

“Lilith, you’re glowing,” Sissy whispered.

Lilith whipped out the little square of linen tucked into her bodice. She patted at her temples before swiping the handkerchief around her neck. “I’m perspiring. Ladies do perspire, contrary to all of Miss Beaumont’s arguments to the contrary.”

“I’ve seen the way Lord Malleville looks at you,” Sissy continued, relentless as a terrier cornering a rat. “As if he’d like to eat you up. Can you imagine how awkward family dinners will be if I am forced to marry him?”

Lilith didn’t bother to tell the girl there would be no family dinners in their future. No matter how many times, or in how many ways, she’d tried to explain the facts of life to the earl’s daughter, the thick-headed chit insisted upon sprinkling every conversation with such ridiculous sentiments.

“I can’t be the only one to notice his attention is on the wrong sister,” Sissy added. “Might we not use that to our advantage? Mother is always saying the appearance of impropriety is as damaging as impropriety itself.”

“The countess has much to answer for,” Lilith replied. “The appearance of impropriety is nowhere near as damaging as impropriety itself. And Lord Malleville will not forego thirty thousand pounds plus three percent simply because someone, or an entire dining room, church or parlor full of someones, makes mention of the manner in which he looks upon me. But never fear, I’ve already set in motion a plan to see you freed from the shackles of this particular marriage.”

“But what if that one works no better than your current plan?” Sissy asked. “No, you’re right. You’ll just have to entice him to kiss you.”

“I never said I would entice him to kiss me.”

“Maybe allow him to touch your bosom. On the outside of your gown, of course.”

“Are you suggesting I compromise Lord Malleville in hopes he jilts you to do the honorable thing and marry me?”

“You don’t have to marry him, only lead him to believe you will long enough for him release me and forgive Papa’s debt.”

“Entice him, entrap him, string him along and, for an encore, pauper him?” Lilith cried, her voice rising as her temper sparked, suddenly and inexplicably.

“Do you truly think you could?” Sissy’s eyes glowed with glee. “Pretend for days or even weeks?”

“Look around you,” Lilith ordered, waving one hand about to indicate their surroundings. “Malleville’s gardens are untended and his house is falling to ruins. Susan was forced to marry a man without title or wealth because her dowry, if she was in possession of any such thing, was middling at best. The baron managed to send Matthew to university and give Amelia a London Season. But do you truly believe she now rusticates in the country, forgoing any possibility of an advantageous marriage, by choice?”

“None of that is my fault, or even Papa’s fault.”

It was an altogether familiar refrain that had Lilith’s vision going blurry as her sparking temper ignited and caught fire.

“No, Malleville is to blame. He buggered himself royally all on his own, but he shouldered that blame alone as well.” Lilith could not seem to halt the words pouring from her lips, no matter she was vaguely aware the game had ceased and all eyes were firmly turned in their direction. “He took responsibility as a man with a family should do and set about making things right. I don’t know how he did it, but I imagine it was years of hard work, the likes of which most gentlemen would not recognize.”

“Then he ought to have married some local miss who would appreciate all that toiling and working and what not,” Sissy replied mulishly, crossing her arms over her bosom.

“He intended to marry just such a lady. A pretty Cornish girl, daughter to a local gentleman who’d been betrothed to him nearly half her life and brought with her a dowry worth more than thirty, forty or even a hundred thousand pounds. And he would have, had Dunaway not gotten beneath her skirts and crowed about it all over Town.”

“Still, why did he have to empty the family coffers to buy me?”

“He’s a man, stupid and asinine the lot of them,” Lilith shrieked. “If they are not blinded by lust, it is pride or honor or one of a hundred other convoluted notions only they comprehend. It hardly matters why. The fact is Malleville did deplete his fortune buying himself an earl’s daughter for a bride. And he is not going to break the marriage contract on the strength of a few kisses and a quick grope of my breasts. Nor will I whore myself out to save you from a fate far better than that Dunaway’s other daughters will face when, and if, they marry!”

Sissy blinked and took a step back, her mouth falling open to form a perfect little pink O of surprise. All was quiet but for the whisper of the breeze through the grass and birds chirping in some distant tree.

Lilith tilted her head back and drew in a deep breath, expelling it on a fractured sigh.

The sky was a startling, lovely shade of blue. As blue as the bouquet of wilted hydrangeas a freckle-faced boy had given her once, long ago. Patrick had been his name, Patrick O’Riley. He’d been down from university, visiting London for the first time. Lord, how sweet and naïve he’d been, calling upon her and taking tea in Gwendolyn’s scarlet and gold parlor, oblivious to the fact he was in the home of London’s premier courtesan.

“What’s a grope, Princess Lilith?”

Meg’s voice shattered both the silence and the odd memory.

“A grope is what happens to girls who ignore their instincts and allow themselves to be led down the primrose path,” Lilith answered, lowering her head to find the entirety of Malleville’s family looking at her from various locals upon the lawn. “Be sure to stay off primrose paths as they are invariably twisted and rutted and lined with thorns.”

“Er, I believe it’s your shot, Lilith,” Matthew said with a smile and a wink.

It was a shame he hadn’t a preference for females. Harry needed a gentle sort of husband, one who might smooth her jagged edges and buff away the fine cracks.

“So it is,” Lilith agreed, crossing the lawn as if she hadn’t a care in the world. As if she hadn’t engaged in a shouting match with Dunaway’s spoiled, petulant daughter. About kissing and groping and enticing and entrapping.

Her ball was barely six inches from the wicket, six relatively weed-free, smooth inches. It needed but a soft tap to send it gently rolling through the arch.

Lilith swung the mallet back and brought it down with all her might.

The crack of wood on wood reverberated around the lawn.

The little, green speckled ball, chosen by Sissy because it matched her eyes, sailed over the wicket and through the air, growing smaller and smaller until it landed and disappeared in the tall grass sprouting along the cliffs in the distance. Likely splashing into the ocean she’d yet to see, what with the weather proving as tempestuous as Gwendolyn on a good day.