The Perfect Rake (8 page)

R. B. S
HERIDAN

T
HE QUIETLY UTTERED WORDS SEEMED TO ECHO AROUND THE ROOM.

Great-uncle Oswald gaped for a moment, then spluttered, “Wha—! What the devil d’ye mean
you
are the Duke of Dinstable?”

The neatly dressed man merely raised an eyebrow, but it was the sort of gesture one could only inherit from generations of haughty-browed ducal ancestors. Great-uncle Oswald needed no further convincing. “Then who the deuce is this smoky knave?” he demanded angrily.

The duke raised his eyebrow again. “Allow me to present my cousin, Lord Carradice. And you are…?”

“Lord Carradice!”
exclaimed Great-uncle Oswald, goggling in horror. “Lord
Carradice?
Why, I—I’ve
heard
of you!”

Lord Carradice bowed. It was a perfectly correct bow, thought Prudence, annoyed, yet it conveyed all sorts of other things—mockery, indifference, amusement. How dare he bow at her great-uncle like that. How dare he trick her! She frowned at him.

“Delighted to meet—”

Great-uncle Oswald cut him off. “Delighted, nothing, sirrah! I’ve heard all about
you
—you’re nothing but a rake! A scoundrel! A blackguard of the worst sort!”

“You
have
heard of me,” murmured Lord Carradice, with every evidence of delight, and he bowed again.

Prudence squashed an impulse to giggle at such disgraceful behavior. She glared at him again.

“How dare you deceive me as to your true identity!” Great-uncle Oswald turned to the duke. “Do you realize, Your Grace, that this—this—”

“Scoundrel,” offered Lord Carradice helpfully. “Shag bag. Unshaven lout. Cad. Smoky knave.”

“This unmitigated reprobate,” continued Great-uncle Oswald, undeterred, “had the temerity to introduce himself to me—here in this very room!—by your own title.”

The duke glanced at his cousin in inquiry.

“Actually, I didn’t,” Lord Carradice said gently.

“But—” began Great-uncle Oswald.

Lord Carradice held up a hand. “Ungentlemanly as it may be, I must point out that it was your great-niece who introduced us.” He turned to Prudence. “Miss Merridew? You have the floor, I think.” His eyes met hers with wicked amusement, belying the earnest, reproachful manner he had adopted.

The wretch!
Prudence gripped her reticule hard. He was positively delighting in embarrassing her. He had led her most cunningly down the garden path, and was taking quite obvious delight in watching her flounder in her tangled web. That fact that she deserved it didn’t make her any less annoyed. She longed to throw something at his handsome face.

No wonder he had been not the slightest bit perturbed when she explained the false betrothal ruse to him. He’d known all along he couldn’t possibly be implicated—not as the Duke of Dinstable. He’d
known
that she’d be made to look the veriest simpleton, the most complete nincompoop! Oh, what a fiend! He could have warned her, could have explained, but no! He’d only compounded her errors with his silence.

Two can play at that game, my lord.
What had the duke called him? Gideon, yes, that was it. His first name was Gideon.

She blinked innocently back at Lord Carradice and said in a soft, puzzled voice, “But Gideon, dear, I do not understand.” She allowed her voice to falter. “You mean you are not really the duke? And this gentleman is?” She gave the real duke a brave little smile of piteous bewilderment. “But why would you—” She broke off artistically.

There was another short silence in the room as its occupants absorbed the implications of this speech. Too late, Prudence realized that her temper had led her into a worse case than before.

“Oh, vile deceiver!” Great-uncle Oswald leaped to his feet. “How dare you dupe an innocent gel in such an appallin’ manner! Flyin’ under false colors, you cowardly impostor! What a shockin’ humbug! To try to dazzle an unworldly child by laying claim to a rank not your own—”

“Child?” interrupted the Duke of Dinstable.

“Sixteen, she was, when this blackguard first tried his bamboozlin’ ways upon her! Sixteen!”

The duke looked at Gideon.

Unconcerned, Gideon pulled out a slender sheaf of papers from his coat pocket. He broke the seals and thumbed quickly through them, feigning complete indifference to the discussion at hand. He was enjoying the role of the callous heartbreaker. For once, he was innocent of all accusations. Not that he ever dallied with innocents; it was one of his rules. And he doubted he had ever broken anyone’s heart. The ladies he dallied with bore little evidence of a heart.

He darted a quick look at Miss Merridew, and his amusement deepened. A most unusual female. Gently bred and, he thought, a true innocent, despite her brazenness in entering a strange gentleman’s house and claiming a secret betrothal with him. Or perhaps because of it. No truly worldly female would have the temerity to try such a simple ruse. He had no idea what bizarre game she was playing, but there was no denying it, the whole thing was vastly amusing.

Sir Oswald shook a furious finger at him. “Use another man’s title to steal the innocent heart from a maiden’s tender breast, would you?”

Gideon tossed the papers carelessly into the coal scuttle and regarded the maiden’s tender breasts with interest, examining their shape and fullness with great pleasure. They were hastily covered with a pair of militantly crossed arms. He lifted his gaze and met a maiden’s glaring eyeballs. Her smooth cheeks were flushed and the tender breasts were now heaving in indignation beneath their green muslin armor. A small, slippered foot tapped angrily on the parquetry floor. Gideon chuckled.

Prudence had had enough. How dare he—he—look at her in such a manner. She felt hot, breathless, excited—furious! It was time to end this disastrous charade.

“So!” she declared. “You have been deceiving me!” Unable to muster a convincing sob, she whipped out a lace handkerchief from her reticule and applied it to her eyes. “All of this time, you have been filling my ears with lies!” She drew herself up and said with immense dignity, “I cannot bear it a moment longer! You are without shame! I could not possibly wed a man of such unsteady character!”

Lord Carradice, more than her equal in the dramatic arts, slapped a tragic hand across his heart and staggered back a pace, and demonstrated wounded to the quick, in silence.

Great-uncle Oswald watched, frowning. He looked unconvinced. Prudence cast around for some way to end the matter definitively. An idea flew into her mind.

She snatched up the papers he had tossed aside so carelessly. “My letters,” she explained to her great-uncle. She turned and brandished them in Lord Carradice’s face. “You are heartless to flaunt these in my face, to treat them with such cavalier disdain. It is over, Lord Carradice! I want never to see you again!” She ripped them up and dashed them into the fire with great panache. “Oh, that I was ever foolish enough to give my heart to a rake.” The fire smoldered, then flared eagerly as the papers caught.

“Oh, no, not the
billets doux
. My love letters!” cried Lord Carradice in a choked voice. He leaped toward the fire and snatched in vain at the burning papers. He burned his fingers on one and dropped it with a mild curse.

Stunned, Prudence watched him. The shredded sheets of paper curled into twists of flame and ash. He couldn’t be serious. Surely they could not be
real
love letters she had burned? He’d just glanced at them and cast them into a coal scuttle with a complete lack of interest. Anything thrown into a coal scuttle was meant for burning! Wasn’t it?

And yet he looked so distraught. The hollow feeling in her chest grew.

What if they were love letters? Had he tossed them in the coal scuttle as a blind, meaning to collect them later? She’d used all sorts of devious methods of hiding Phillip’s rare letters from prying eyes. Apart from one special letter that she treasured, his letters weren’t romantic: Phillip was a prosaic writer and his letters were usually a short recital of his daily activities. Even so, she’d never tossed even the dullest one into a coal scuttle.

Prudence bit her lip. Lord Carradice was staring into the fire, watching his letters burn. He looked desolated, completely crushed. Even his giveaway eyes were no longer laughing.

She groaned inwardly. Why had she ever considered this mad idea? It had seemed quite simple at the time. There must be insanity in her family. Certainly Grandpapa was…eccentric. But even he had never burst into a strange ducal residence, claimed betrothal to the duke—who was really a lord and apparently a notorious rake as well—and then burned the rake’s love letters.

Who knew, but the writer of those letters might have reformed him of his rakish behavior. Love could reform a rake, she had heard.

She thought of the one special letter Phillip had sent her.
“You are the sole dream that keeps me going in this hellhole on earth.”

Any moment now, Lord Carradice would turn on her in rage, abandon his inexplicable charade, and explain her outrageous folly to her Great-uncle Oswald and the duke. And then she would have to confess all, and she knew well what would happen then: she would be sent back to Norfolk in disgrace. And then her sisters and she would never escape.

Prudence felt sick. She thought she’d come up with such a clever plan, but in fact, she had ruined everything.

Lord Carradice heaved a huge sigh. It had the effect of drawing everyone’s attention back to him. “Oh well, it was worth a try,” he said in a regretful tone.

Prudence guiltily recalled his burned fingers. Even a charred shred of love letter was better than no love letter at all.

“I suppose such an imposture was bound to be exposed in the end,” he added. “Imposture always does come out.” He looked at Prudence sadly.

Imposture!
He was about to expose her. Prudence took a deep breath and braced herself.

“I apologize for deceiving you, Miss Merridew.”

Prudence blinked.

“You cannot mean you
did
deceive this young lady as to your identity, Gideon?” The duke looked mildly shocked.

Lord Carradice shrugged sheepishly. “I am such a worthless fribble, you know, Edward. Girls are so much more impressed with your title than mine.”

The duke’s eyes narrowed, but he said nothing.

Prudence held her breath.

Great-uncle Oswald finally spoke. “You, sirrah, are a disgrace to your name and your class! Tellin’ a filly a few Banbury tales to impress her is one thing; masqueradin’ as a duke and enterin’ into a secret betrothal is quite another! And this poor, trustin’ little creature has waited for you to speak to her grandpapa or me—as a man should—for nigh on four and a half years!”

“Four and a half years, four and a half months, four and a half minutes…” Lord Carradice gazed at Prudence soulfully. “Time means nothing, when one is in love.”

The duke frowned, sent a piercing look toward his cousin, then turned his gaze on Prudence.

Prudence didn’t know whether to kiss Lord Carradice or to strangle him! She was grateful that he had not exposed her, of course she was! But his talk of love was making things worse again. She had severed the false betrothal, and he was off the hook. If he would only be quiet, she could leave now, and though Great-uncle Oswald would be angry, it might not be the complete disaster she had feared a few moments before.

“Come, Great-uncle Oswald, let us leave,” she said in a low voice. “I have no desire to have my folly any further discussed. My betrothal is at an end, no harm has been done, and I would be grateful if we could depart at once.” She took the old man’s arm and tried to steer him toward the door, but Great-uncle Oswald refused to budge. He glared from Lord Carradice to the duke and back.

“So that’s it, then, is it?”

Nobody responded. Prudence tugged at his arm, in vain.

“You engage yourself to my great-niece in a dashed havey-cavey manner, under a false title, you keep the gel danglin’ for four years, then I find you meetin’ her in secret, alone and unchaperoned—”

“No, no! I brought Lily with me.”

Great-uncle Oswald dismissed her maid with a wave of his hand. “In the hallway—doesn’t count!”

“And there was the butler. He was with us almost all the time,” Prudence added desperately.

“Pah! Butlers can be bought!”

An affronted snort came from outside the door.

Lord Carradice grinned. “Bribe Bartlett? But he’s so expensive!”

“Be that as it may,” said Great-uncle Oswald, “the gel has been compromised enough by—”

“No, no,” cried Prudence, realizing Great-uncle Oswald was about to insist on marriage. “There is no question of compromise. I utterly refuse. The betrothal is off. I cannot marry a man such as, such as…this!” Unable to think of any sufficiently damning epithet, she gestured at Lord Carradice in disgust. She looked at him hard, willing him to take up her lead. Surely he would.

Lord Carradice opened his mouth to speak. Prudence relaxed a little.

“What if I shave?” he said. “I look much better when I’m shaved. My cousin will vouch for that—do I not look almost handsome when I shave, Edward?” He didn’t wait for the duke’s reply but turned earnestly back to Prudence. “Do you think you could marry me if I shaved?” The duke frowned and stared at Lord Carradice intently. Lord Carradice ignored him.

The man was impossible! Prudence glared at him. “No,” she snapped. “I would not marry you if you were the last man left alive in the world! You are a complete—an utter—” She waved her hands in frustration, but the words would not come. All she could think of was
shag bag,
or
scoundrel,
or
unshaven lout,
or
smoky knave,
and if she uttered those words, she knew she would be completely undone.

It was impossible. The whole thing had got completely out of control. She had tried everything she could think of and now she could see only one way out of her current predicament.

So she fainted.

It was quite a good faint, she thought, being unplanned and the first she had ever attempted. It certainly put an end to the ridiculous conversation about her betrothal to Lord Carradice. The only trouble was that she should perhaps have signaled her imminent collapse to Great-uncle Oswald—a sigh or a small gasp of feminine distress perhaps. Elderly men clearly found it not to their liking to be the recipient of an unexpectedly falling female.