The Spinster and the Rake (9 page)

A quick frown knit his brow. “Do you mean to tell me that no one remembered your birthday?”

“I can scarcely blame them,” she replied with a rueful smile. “After all, I have had so
very
many.”

“Gilly . . .” he began suddenly, when a loud knocking interrupted them. “Go away,” he ordered crossly, but the heavy door opened anyway, filling Gillian with a relief that it hadn’t been locked. A relief that quickly vanished as she recognized Bertie’s panicked face.

“Excuse me,” he mumbled, embarrassment and terror overwhelming him. “But Uncle Derwent’s here! Felicity must have let something slip. He demands to know where you are. I’ve denied everything, but he intends to make a thorough search!”

“Not of my house, he doesn’t,” Marlowe stated in a cold, implacable voice.

“Don’t be absurd,” Gillian said, rising slowly, her heart pounding in a fear she told herself was absurd and unnatural. “Tell Derwent to wait for me below. I will join him in a moment.”

“Good gracious, Gilly, you don’t mean to admit that you’re here!” Bertie gasped.

“I can’t see what else I can do. Any number of people saw me come in here tonight and will doubtless be happy to tell him so. I don’t wish to have Derwent make a cake of himself more than he already has, and I certainly don’t wish him to insult Lord Marlowe further.”

“But he’ll be furious, Gilly.”

Gillian took a deep breath. “Derwent is only human, Bertie. You have to know how to manage him. Go and tell him I’ll be along immediately.”

Bertie withdrew, shaking his head ominously. Putting her empty glass down on the table, she smiled very prettily up at Marlowe, hoping the trepidation wouldn’t show in her fine blue eyes. It was a vain hope.

“Should I go with you?” he questioned abruptly. “Or would I only make things worse?”

“Definitely the latter. As soon as I get him home I’ll be able to explain, but I dislike above all things the thought of a public brangle. Derwent is odiously difficult on occasion.”

“Stiff-rumped I believe was the term,” Marlowe said nonchalantly, reaching out a strong hand and placing it on her arm. “This is hardly a proper way to celebrate your majority. We shall have to plan it better next time.”

“Next time?”

“You promised to have dinner and cards with me.” His hand tightened slowly on her arm.

“Well, perhaps . . .”

“Unless you are frightened of your brother’s disapproval?” he taunted.

“Don’t be absurd. Derwent doesn’t run my life.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Besides not accepting unsuitable gifts from gentlemen who are not members of your family, what else have you failed to do in your thirty long years?” he inquired. “Have you ever been kissed? That is, by a gentleman who is not a member of your family?”

“I’ll have you know I once fancied myself very much in love. Back when I was a green girl. And he loved me!” she said defiantly.

A small smile quirked the corners of his mouth. “But did he ever kiss you?”

She looked up, startled to find herself suddenly so close to him. “Of course not! He had too much respect for me.”

“What a slow-top. It is fortunate I am so lacking in respect,” he said, drawing her unresisting body into his arms, “because it is clearly past time.” His mouth descended on hers with a thoroughness that left in no doubt that he considered she had indeed reached her majority. She could hear his heart beating through the clothing that separated them, feel his arms about her in a way that was positively possessive, as his hot mouth came down on hers. It seemed to brand and search her, and she knew she should fight, scream, or faint, that some resistance was definitely called for. She decided she could always blame the champagne, and entwined her arms about his neck, answering his mouth to the best of her limited experience.

That devastating kiss seemed to go on forever, and yet was far too short. He pulled back, looking down at her with a tender, mocking smile. “Not bad for a first attempt,” he said huskily, and bent his head again.

Finally sense took hold of Gillian’s addled brain. Wrenching herself from the warm comfort of his arms, she ran from the room as if the very devil were after her. Marlowe watched her graceful figure vanish with a troubled expression in his dark green eyes. Leaning down, he picked up her discarded champagne glass, held it aloft in a silent toast, and drained it.

Chapter Nine

IT WAS SCARCELY the most pleasant ride home that evening. Not a word issued forth from Derwent Redfern’s glowering face, though the heavy jowls were set in deep disapproval, the flinty eyes promising a ghastly retribution once they had attained the fastness of Redfern House. Bertie trailed along, head down, suitably abashed. Gillian had little doubt he had already sustained a severe tongue lashing, and she wondered how long Derwent could restrain himself. As they jolted along the rutted London streets in the darkness, Gillian allowed herself a small smile. Her lips were still burning from Marlowe’s kiss, and she decided quite frankly that the embrace had been an even more delightful present than the earbobs swinging from her delicate ears. So that was what real kissing was like. How deliciously wonderful! Never again, of course, but at least now she understood what all the fuss was about, why girls longed to get married. Yet somehow she couldn’t imagine any man but Marlowe could kiss with such devastating effect.

She stared across the darkened interior of the carriage at her brother’s set face, and wondered idly why she wasn’t in more of a panic. It usually required only a mild frown from Derwent’s heavy face to set her in a taking. But not tonight. She had reached her majority, been kissed by one of the most attractive men she had ever met, and she wasn’t about to let her overbearing brother’s megrims spoil it for her. And she would tell him so, once he broached the subject. As a matter of fact, she was, for the first time in her life, quite looking forward to a good dust-up. Stripping off the thin kid gloves, she surreptitiously brushed her fingers along her tremulous lips. Lips that Marlowe had found worthy of kissing, she reminded herself, and her eyes were shining.

She realized with a start of surprise that the carriage had come to a halt outside Redfern House. “You will have no trouble seeing yourself off to bed, Bertram,” Derwent was saying in his lugubrious voice. “My sister and I wish to be private.”

“Of course, Uncle,” Bertie said cravenly as he jumped down from the carriage. Derwent made no move to follow him. “Aren’t you coming in?” he stammered nervously.

“In my own good time,” his uncle replied. “What I have to say to your aunt doesn’t want overhearing by a bunch of servants with nothing more constructive to fill their time than listening to their betters.”

Always agile, Gillian scrambled from the carriage just ahead of Derwent’s admonishing grip. “Well, I don’t care to be cloistered in a carriage with you, Derwent,” she said boldly, and Derwent’s heavy eyebrows went up. “It’s cold and I’m tired. If you have anything to say to me you may come into the drawing room and do so. Otherwise you may sit in this carriage till judgment day. Bertie, your arm.” She swept up the front steps, her hand firmly on Bertie’s weak and trembling arm.

“Gilly, how could you dare?” he breathed, tripping over the top step. “Uncle Derwent was already in a rare taking. He’ll be livid after this.”

“I doubt he could be any angrier,” she replied as she stepped into the warm front hall and handed her pelisse to the impassive butler. “Derwent always was a bully, even as a child. It amazes me that I had forgotten,” she mused. “He’s bound to give me a dressing down and sulk for a few days. Or even threaten to pack me off to your parents or Pamela. But in the end Letty’s comfort will come first, and you know she cannot manage her children without me around.”

Bertie looked astounded at his aunt’s plain speaking. “I never knew you to be so cynical, Gilly.”

“I’m not cynical. Merely realistic. At the advanced age of thirty I am surely past romantic idealism.”

“I don’t know that Lord Marlowe would agree with that,” Bertie offered, and then clammed up as Derwent stomped into the hallway, his face thunderous.

“Go to bed, Bertram,” he snapped. “Unless you prefer to return to your parents tomorrow morning.”

Bertie, bless his heart, looked torn, Gillian observed with amusement—torn between abject terror of her bullying brother and a desire to defend his hapless aunt. Terror won, and with mumbled apologies he disappeared up the stairs, leaving her to face the bearlike presence in front of her.

“Would you deign to attend me in my study?” he inquired with awful sarcasm, “or would that be too much to request?”

A shiver of nervousness washed over her, and she set her mind firmly on a certain rakish gentleman, squaring her shoulders and meeting her brother’s glare with an amiable smile. “Certainly, brother,” she replied calmly. “Though I don’t see why you can’t say what you want to me now and have done with it. The servants are just as likely to overhear us there as right here in the hallway.”

Derwent hesitated, frustration turning his heavy features a mottled red. But still Gillian made no move toward the study, and drawing a deep, disapproving breath, he plunged into his diatribe. “Gillian, I am most disturbed! How could you have gone to such a place, with that young idiot as your only attendant? Don’t you realize what sort of reputation Lord Marlowe enjoys? And how very singular you must appear to have gone to his gaming hell? I don’t know what Sir Eustace Pogrebin will have to say to all this when he hears of it.”

“What has Sir Eustace Pogrebin to say to anything?” Gillian demanded, mystified.

“He has admitted a certain interest in your direction,” Derwent announced heavily. “I had not given up hope of having you turned off creditably, even at this late date, but after tonight’s outrageous behavior I have grave doubts.”

“Turning me off creditably?” Gillian echoed in a shriek. “Sir Eustace Pogrebin is a fat, pale slug who smells of wet dog and has damp, encroaching hands and the most pushing manner! Besides, he is ancient, and I am not having any part of him.”

“Sir Eustace Pogrebin is the same age as Ronan Marlowe, and a great deal more eligible,” Derwent said sharply.

“Not as far as I’m concerned.”

“Do you mean to tell me you cherish hopes of Marlowe? Let me tell you, my girl, that you wouldn’t be the first one to have her hopes dashed by such an unconscionable rake. He’s been holding out lures to susceptible young ladies ever since he reached the age of eighteen, and I would hope he hasn’t added you to his lists of conquests.”

There was still a trace of champagne in Gillian’s blood. “How do you know I haven’t added him to
my
list of conquests?”

Derwent’s mouth opened, closed, and opened again. “Do you mean to suggest he has had the temerity to make you an offer? I find that extremely difficult to believe.”

“I am not considered an antidote quite yet, Derwent!”

“No, of course not,” he agreed in a surprisingly soothing tone. “But you aren’t in Marlowe’s line at all. However, if he has made you an offer, it behooves me to meet with him and—”

“You know perfectly well he has not,” she said abruptly, disliking the smug gleam in his small dark eyes.

“And I know perfectly well that you have too good an idea of what is due your name and your family even to countenance such impertinence,” he said. “And I trust you won’t forget again.”

“Hmmph,” replied Gillian in an unencouraging manner.

“My dear.” He tried a more placating tone in the face of her response. “What in the world made you do anything so foolish? When you know how much we would dislike the connection?”

“
I
do not dislike the connection,” she said flatly. “And I was celebrating my thirtieth birthday, something my family quite forgot to do.”

Derwent had the grace to look abashed. “You should have told me,” he accused.

“I did. Several times. But believe me, brother dear, I enjoyed myself far more this evening than I would have closeted with you and Letty!” With that bit of pleasurable impertinence she turned her back on him and sailed up the stairs.

“Did he ring a rare peal over you?” Felicity was awaiting her in the small, comfortable bedroom that had been allotted the maiden aunt, an anxious expression on her pretty face as she sat cross-legged on Gilly’s bed, a shawl around her thin night rail.

Gillian found herself unaccountably relieved and amused. “Well, he tried to do so,” she admitted, seating herself at her dressing table and beginning to divest herself of her diamonds. “But I refused to let him.”

“You
refused
to let him?” she echoed, aghast.

“Absolutely. I was not in the mood to be bullied,” she said blithely, eyeing her reflection with a critical eye. Her thick, tawny hair framed her face quite nicely in the new style, she had to admit. And the glowing eyes, the bright cheeks, and the tremulous mouth did not come amiss either. Why, she really was quite pretty. And Marlowe was right, her face was as smooth and unlined as Felicity’s. She swung her head wonderingly, and the diamonds flashed in the candlelight. Sir Eustace Pogrebin, indeed.

“I am so terribly sorry I told him where you were,” Felicity was saying, unaware of her aunt’s inattention. “But they woke me up on the drawing room sofa and I just blurted it out. I tried to . . .” her voice trailed off. “Where did you get those earrings?”

Gilly met her niece’s eyes in the mirror. “Earrings?” she echoed innocently. “Why, I’ve always had them.”

“What a bouncer! Those are the same earbobs we saw in the jeweler’s shop that day with Lord Marlowe. Don’t tell me you went back there yourself and bought them,” she accused.

“Well, I won’t tell you that, since it would be untrue.”

“That hasn’t stopped you before. Where did you get them?” demanded Felicity. “You weren’t wearing them when you left.”

“You weren’t in any state to notice anything when we left,” her aunt said tartly. “And how in the world you knew where we were when you were sound asleep long before we made our plans . . .”

“I wasn’t quite asleep,” Felicity admitted sheepishly. “I was just resting my eyes. I knew perfectly well that you wouldn’t have gone without me, nor with me, for that matter. And I wanted you to go out and celebrate on your birthday,” she said virtuously.

“Well, that is extremely kind of you, Felicity, but . . .”

“Don’t change the subject. Where did you get those earbobs?”

“They were a birthday present.”

“Whomever from? No one in the family remembered . . .” Felicity stopped, her eyes wide with sudden comprehension. “Oh, merciful heavens, you don’t mean Marlowe himself . . . ?”

They
were
pretty earrings, Gillian thought idly. “Indeed, I do mean Lord Marlowe himself.”

“He gave them to you?”

Gillian nodded.

“And you accepted them?” Again Gilly nodded, and Felicity let out a rude whistle of amazement. “But Gilly, a lady never accepts such a gift from a gentleman unless he is a member of her immediate family. Does Papa know?”

“Of course not. And you aren’t to tell him,” Gilly said fiercely. “It doesn’t mean anything. Lord Marlowe is a trifle eccentric, and he wished me to have these earrings. I tried to refuse, but then I decided that would be foolishly churlish of me. But that doesn’t mean anyone has to know where they came from.”

“Gilly, you are becoming devious.”

Gillian sighed happily. “I suppose I am.”

“Gilly?” There was a troubled note in Felicity’s voice.

“Yes, my sweet?”

“You . . . you aren’t in love with Lord Marlowe, are you?” she inquired anxiously, pleating her night rail with distracted fingers as she surveyed her surprising aunt.

“In love?” Gillian’s laugh was creditable. “Have you been reading romantic novels again?”

“And who was it started me on them?” Felicity shot back. “You haven’t answered my question.”

Gillian didn’t really wish to take off the earbobs that Ronan Marlowe had placed so deftly in her ears, but she could scarcely sleep with them tangling in her hair. Removing them with seemingly unconcerned dispatch, she refused to meet her niece’s accusing eyes. “Don’t be absurd, Felicity. Lord Marlowe has been all that is charming, and I must admit it feeds my consequence to have such an eligible parti paying me compliments. But I am past the age of romance, my dear.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Don’t you? I assure you, I am not lying,” she lied blithely. “I look on Lord Marlowe as an elderly version of your cousin Bertie. With a bit more sense, I might add.”

Felicity was still unconvinced, and Gillian judged it time to change the subject to one closer to her volatile niece’s heart. “You haven’t told me how you and Mr. Blackstone are getting along. I presume that was where you were yesterday afternoon?”

The ploy succeeded. “We aren’t getting along well at all,” she said darkly, biting her lip. “He seems to think he’s not good enough for me. That he can’t provide me with fancy dresses and jewels and parties. As if I cared for such trumpery stuff!”

“You seem to have been fairly attached to such trumpery stuff anytime these past few months,” Gillian pointed out in a kindly tone.

“Well, if I had Liam I wouldn’t have to fill my time with such fustian,” Felicity replied, and Gillian was inclined to believe her. “But will he listen? Of course not. Men always think they know best what will make women happy.”

“Occasionally they do,” Gilly observed, eyeing the ear-bobs fondly.

“Perhaps,” Felicity conceded. “But not this time. Liam insists that he won’t take me away from the only kind of life I’ve ever known. I shall simply have to convince him that the life I’m leading is far less preferable to one with him, despite the hardships he envisions.”

Like Felicity’s maid before her, Gillian was filled with dread. “Whatever do you have in mind?” she inquired faintly.

“I haven’t decided yet. But something suitably daring to convince Liam that a life with him would be much better than the sinful ways one could get into in society.”

“Sinful?” she echoed, aghast.

“Well, not precisely sinful. I haven’t made up my mind. But if you’re certain you have no interest in Lord Marlowe, he might prove just the thing. If Liam thought I was about to be compromised by a gazetted rake, I don’t doubt he’d make some move to stop it.”

“Felicity, it wouldn’t do to underestimate Lord Marlowe. I don’t think he’s a person to make a may-game of,” Gillian stammered.