The Trouble With Being Wicked (5 page)

“Oh, no, my lord.” Nordstrom stood straight and clasped the hat behind his back. “You were.”

He? Missing? Absurd. Miss Smythe even had his servants upside down. But it amused him to imagine his footmen combing the moors for his helpless carcass. “I’m touched you noticed.”

 
Nordstrom, ever stately, regarded him with all the emotion of a boiled turnip. “I think it my duty to be concerned about you, my lord.”

Ash glanced again at the Morbier, fully entertained now. “You needn’t have. I suspect that clock is running fast.”

Nordstrom’s eyes moved edgewise to assess the expensive timekeeper he’d no doubt wound himself. “I should never disagree with you, my lord.”

Ash’s smile cracked at that. “No, you should not.”

“Then I must accept all responsibility for creating unnecessary alarm. Routine is the bedrock of a well-run house, as you are fond of reminding us, and when Evans informed me you did not arrive for your toilette, I worried some ill fate had befallen you. Knowing as how you are always advising the Misses Lancester of the dangers present on the moors, I think I was not wholly in the wrong.”

There was definitely something dangerous lurking about the moors. A vixen with a succubus’s body and a quick tongue. “If you say you were not wrong, Nordstrom, then I’m inclined to agree with you. In my defense, I’ve never been required to escort anyone off the old Amherst property.” He looked askance at his butler as he shrugged out of his greatcoat. “Nor can I recall being required to explain myself to my retainer. The day doesn’t lack for larks, does it?”

Nordstrom’s hands fell to his sides, leaving Ash’s hat to dangle from his fingertips. “
True
danger, my lord! I see nothing funny in your coming upon lurkers.”

“Lurkers? Much worse, Nordstrom. Women.”

“Women, you say?” Nordstrom’s jaw hung nearly open.

“I was just as incredulous.”

“I should think so! Are the ladies from London, then?”

“They’re not ladies. But yes, I think they are from Town.” Ash paused. “What an odd thing to ask. How did you know?”

“I didn’t, my lord,” Nordstrom replied with a straight face. “How could I? I’ve been here all day.”

Ash shot his butler a warning glower, the same testing suspicion he turned on his sisters from time to time. “Should you hear anything of interest, inform me without delay.”
 

“Yes, my lord.” Nordstrom’s lips turned down, giving the impression he would walk about with his fingers in his ears to avoid any such unpleasant discussions in the future. Then he blinked, as though he’d just recalled a message. “Your sisters
were
out,” he said, causing Ash to stiffen. “They returned their mounts only just ahead of you. Stevens sent word but a minute ago.”

“He might have not saddled their horses to begin with,” Ash grumbled. He knew it was futile to chide his servants, though. They were the best eyes and ears he had, but he suspected their allegiances lay with the younger members of his household.

With a nod to Nordstrom, Ash took himself up to dress for dinner. Aside from his strict rule on arriving clean and neat, freshening up now was a stall tactic. God knew, he and his sisters butted heads often enough when he was in a pleasant mood. It didn’t improve his humor to know he must now withhold the treat he’d gone through so much effort to obtain. At least ribbons and tongs would hold until a more appropriate time, unlike the morning he’d tried to surprise Lucy with a special birthday breakfast, only to have her lie abed until three in the afternoon. It was
her
birthday, she’d defended, and she might spend it how she liked. He still suspected she’d slipped out of her window for those hours she’d allegedly been snuggled beneath her blankets.

Once again, his thoughts came back to Miss Smythe. Years of raising his head-splitting sisters had made him wary. Unlike his sisters, however, who had been his wards until they’d reached their majority, he had no right to interrogate Miss Smythe or Mrs. Inglewood, no authority over them at all. They could lie to him all they wanted to and he was powerless, because he’d signed the papers that made it so.

He paused in tying his cravat. It was driving him mad to waver between conviction and guilt.
Were
they lying? Or was he seeing villainy where it didn’t exist? Lucy and Delilah certainly accused him of that enough. Could his appalling physical response to Miss Smythe be causing him to seek out a plausible excuse to push her away?

He frowned. Either way, she was to live right next door. It was enough to send him to Bedlam.

At six of the clock, he arrived in the drawing room only to discover his sisters were not there waiting for him. His hand clenched at his side. Was he to have no peace today?

He turned on his heel and nearly collided with Nordstrom. “Where are my sisters?”

“The Misses Lancester?” Nordstrom replied with perfect bafflement, causing blood to pound against Ash’s temples.

“No, Nordstrom, my other sisters.”

“Ah, yes,” his butler replied, as if he’d just remembered. “Miss Delilah asked me to relay a message. They shall not be down until half six.”

How he managed to remain stately while delivering such drivel never ceased to amaze Ash. But it happened damn near every evening. Nordstrom was wrapped around the girls’ thumbs just as thoroughly as Ash was. If Ash thought it would help, he’d practice looking foreboding in a new and different way, mayhap gain a modicum of the respect due him as head of the household. Instead, he merely grunted his disapproval for Nordstrom’s misplaced allegiance and moved on.

The cherry-paneled dining room was too large for one man to dine in by himself. Nevertheless, it was his dining room. Custom dictated he eat in it. He seated himself at the head of the long, polished table and beckoned for a glass of Bordeaux. If he was to dine alone, he may as well do his best to entertain himself.

Approximately halfway through the veal, his footmen snapped to attention. Lucy and Delilah entered the grand room, their black hair damp and coiled at the top of their heads. Their batiste gowns rustled in the silence. Relief that they were well swept through him, directly followed by impatience. The family’s routine hadn’t changed in a dozen years. Why must they be late every night?

Ash set his fork on a serviette and rose. As the girls’ chairs scraped the stone floor, they exchanged a wary glance.

“We found a delightful little bridge—”

“Brixcombe is so enchanting this time of year—”

“Stop there,” Ash said, taking up his fork as he sat again. “Let me have the truth, without fanciful embellishment.”

“But it
was
a nice bridge.” Delilah turned limpid brown eyes on him as a footman began serving courses from the beginning. Make that three men wrapped around their thumbs. “And a vibrant meadow with little rabbits everywhere.”

Ash regarded both of his sisters for several long seconds. He detested interrogating them at least as much as they found his questions contemptible, yet they left him no choice. “It is my duty to see you are safe. How am I to do that if I’ve no idea where you are?”

Delilah widened her eyes innocently at her sister.
 
“But we were perfectly safe, weren’t we, Lucy?”

“We’re here now, so I would say yes. Very safe.” Lucy speared a leek and popped it into her mouth, likely so she couldn’t answer his next question.

“Suppose I ask Evans to accompany you tomorrow?” Ash was not above coercion, not when it came to them. He was their brother, and even if they’d ceased to be his wards in the legal sense, he would never relinquish his responsibility for them. He must do everything in his power to ensure their reputations remained impeccable. As he couldn’t chase them all over Creation himself, he would do the next best thing. Have them supervised.

“Oh, Trestin, why must you be so unfair?” Lucy murmured after an audible swallow, frowning at him as though he’d just disappointed her. Annoyance that she must make him feel a beast frustrated him into gripping his fork until his knuckles whitened.

“It is hardly unreasonable for unmarried girls to exhibit a level of decorum,” he reminded her, believing that if he only tried hard enough, he could convince them to behave with propriety. Else neither girl would marry properly, an outcome he refused to accept. They
must
make good matches. He’d devoted the last seven years to it. Though sometimes—such as now—he wondered if any respectable man would have the courage to take on either of his sisters. They were no biddable girls, his wards, a fault he laid wholly at the feet of his own poor tutelage.

Feeling embarrassed by his failure to raise them properly, he retreated into the comforting repetition of rules. Rules gave one’s life order. They kept a person from weaving too far from the straight and narrow and prevented one from floating away on a fancy. “‘Decorum’ means no sneaking out of the house when I am out,” he said, “and absolutely no running amok through fields and whatever else has you looking so healthy.”

“Needlework and watercolors are boring,” Delilah complained.

“Then play the pianoforte,” he bit out. “Fish in the pond if you must. But for God’s sake, stay on the property.”

“It was only to Brixcombe,” she replied coolly. “At least we might go that far.”

She made him feel like a complete, unreasonable cad. Imagine if
he
were allowed to do every little thing he wished, with no one there to see.

An image of Miss Smythe’s glorious bosom left him breathless.
Precisely.

 
“What will you do if you arrive in London and everyone thinks you’re hoydens?” he asked. “Who will marry you then?”

Both young women looked daggers at him. It was clear they believed themselves invincible. They were too sheltered to realize how quickly gossip spread and over the most trivial things. Their family name had been torn to shreds and as such, they had no room for even the appearance of impropriety. Neither girl had any notion how thoroughly London had mocked their father’s promiscuity, or how easily they could be accused of the same.

But if Lucy and Delilah were sheltered, whose fault was it? It was Ash who’d kept them here through the scandal, and for too many years after that. He’d carefully ordered their world until they were too old to appreciate it.
 

Lucy broke the silence first. “I do not wish to marry, so what good is my virtue?”

His fork clattered to the table. “Dear God, do not say such things in my hearing.” He felt nauseated just thinking about her virtue.

Delilah directed a footman to spoon peas onto her plate. “And I wish to marry Gavin, and he doesn’t give a fig about my virtue.”

Ash could have groaned. It was his own personal hell to have not one but two sisters intent on following in the family’s scandalous footsteps. He deeply wished to do more than glare, to lecture and rage and thunder about, but he was frightfully close to alienating her. He could think of little worse than her becoming prejudiced against him altogether.

Her pronouncement, however, could not go entirely unremarked. “You will not marry Mr. Conley and that is final. You know my feelings on this. He is—”

“I do know.” Delilah clenched her serviette as she came out of her seat. The footman swerved just in time to miss her arm colliding with the blue and white salver of peas in his hand. “We are to be models of femininity, a family living according to the ridiculous standards of the
ton
. Well, I have a thought for you, Ashlin. We will never be accepted in Society. Mother and Father made sure of that. Lucy and I are both firmly on the shelf and you have no prospects. So why must you make the three of us miserable, when all we have is each other?”

She threw her serviette onto the table and quit the room. The footman calmly returned to the sideboard, astutely concluding peas were no longer required.

If only it were not a nightly occurrence, the young man might have shown more interest in her outburst.

Lucy turned accusing eyes on Ash as he rose in deference to their sister’s embarrassing exit. “She’s in love with him,” Lucy reminded him tetchily, as though both girls hadn’t been informing him nightly since the day Delilah had set eyes on the impoverished commoner in whatever mud hut or weedy field they had discovered him in. That was galling in itself: Ash had not been there when they’d been introduced. What if something untoward had occurred?

He caught himself before his emotion veered too far from the facts. Yes, he knew Mr. Conley was not actually a peasant. That was not the point. Delilah must settle herself respectably, with a kind man of modest fortune, for her meager dowry was one of Ash’s personal regrets and her social standing was mired in their parents’ execrable actions. A mere mister, one who required brute strength for his living, could never provide an income Ash considered comfortable. “He’s not good enough.”

“Yes, Trestin,” Lucy said, snatching a handful of sweetmeats from her plate as she rose, “we know.”

She left him to conclude his meal in silence. Pushing his unfinished plate away, he motioned for his glass to be refilled. Another spoilt dinner. How he wished he knew how to talk sense into them. On nights like these, it was easy to wish he had a wife. A soft-spoken, biddable female living in his house, for after seven years of quarreling, his ears were the worse for wear. But more importantly, he desired a helpmate who would offer wise counsel at a time like this.