A Breath of Scandal: The Reckless Brides (7 page)

She made that little of huff of affront again. “I’m not in the least bit little. I’ll warrant that I’m taller than most of the women here tonight.” She waved her articulate fingers in the direction of the ballroom. “My mother would have it that I’m a veritable Amazon. Just because you’re some great giant of a man, doesn’t make me a little thing.”

Something within him broke to the surface of his consciousness—pride, he supposed, along with a great deal of pleasure—at her notice of his physical appearance. It was heady and damned alluring, that feeling. He would need to steer carefully.

“Steady on the helm there. I meant no insult. I’m sure you’re as dangerous and rebellious a young Turk as may be. You’ll notice I’m keeping a cautiously respectful distance.”

“You are,” she agreed. “Thank you. I didn’t mean to be rude.” She rolled the snifter in her hand and then pressed the cool of the glass to the back of her fingers.

“Bruise your knuckles? It doesn’t pay to wear a ring when you engage in fisticuffs.”

She quickly thumbed the ring around, and hid her hand in her lap. “So I’ve learned.” She let out a stronger sigh of clear frustration. “I made rather a mess of things out there, didn’t I? I should have just kneed him in the cods, and pretended he tripped.”

William clamped his jaw shut to keep his drink from erupting from his mouth in a spray. “No brothers? Are you quite sure?”

“Quite.” Her smile was a tart, sweet drop of lemon juice.

What an intriguing girl. “Pray tell me, do you often sneak off to have drinks with appalling acquaintances?”

Her smile blossomed across her mouth, just as he had wanted. She tried to school it into submission, nipping down on her lower lip until the dimples bloomed deep in her cheeks. “No, not often,” she admitted. “This is the first time. And what of you, Commander Jellicoe?”

“Oh, Will will do. Or if you must, just Jellicoe. I get enough of rank and rules in the navy, and I’ll be damned if I’ll do it while chatting up pretty, pugilistic girls on half-pay. Oh, I beg your pardon.”

“No need.” She waved his niceness about his vulgar language away. “Jellicoe then. Nice to meet you. I’m Preston.”

She said it like a man would. Just as any man, sitting in any library, sharing a drink with another fellow, would say. But she definitely wasn’t a fellow. She was as girlish as the lot of them, all soft dress and curves, even if she ran a trifle on the sleek side. Coltish, some would say, with long limbs and graceful strength, but more to his own way of thinking like a trim, nimble sloop.

“The pleasure is all mine, Preston,” he said, as if he didn’t know her name. He wasn’t about to tell her that her name and reputation had careered around the ballroom like a wayward cannon shot, blowing rumors of ruination into every corner. He hadn’t worked hard to dispel that wobble in her chin just to bring it back afresh.

But he reached out his hand because he wanted to touch her. He wanted to see if the glimpse of pert, mischievous sweetness—that light in her eyes—was real.

Her hand, although a great deal smaller than his own, was strong and supple. And soft. Not in the never-done-a-lick-of-work-in-her-life soft of the gloved ballroom misses, but pleasantly, naturally soft. Like water. Strong in its own way. He felt the connection all the way from his palm to the bottom of his spine. Heat fired low in his gut, and when she released his hand and sat back, he felt strangely bereft. As if the wind had blown holes in his sails.

She wasn’t luffing at all. She was rather more emboldened. “So would you have, Jellicoe?” she asked over the top of her glass. “Dropt Mr. Stubbs-Haye like a drunken sailor, you said. For your sister?”

“Most assuredly, though I would have taken him off somewhere else to do it. But I like your way much better. Much more like the navy—straightforward and aboveboard. All hands to witness punishment, and the guilty made known to all.”

“I like that, too.” Her smiled faded into a sigh as she looked into the fire. “But it wasn’t like that, was it? I’m made to be the guilty one. Lady Barrington said it was my own fault that he grabbed my bottom.”

“Ridiculous.” William had been right there on the dance floor. He couldn’t help but overhear as Miss Preston had given Stubby his warning with a verbal shot across his bow before she let loose with the carronade. “But I shan’t object, because if you hadn’t planted the fellow a facer, you’d still be out there on the dance floor, and we might never have met. And I would be drinking inferior liquor. So all in all, despite the very grievous indignity to your person, I think I’ll choose to be glad.”

“Thank you.” She was smiling behind her glass. “You’re very kind.”

Kindness had nothing to do with it. He took another long swallow to forestall the urge to make another perusal of that very same bottom. Although he did prefer the term “derrière.” And hers was lovely. “So is that why you’re hiding in here? Surely you’re made of sterner stuff than to let old Stubby, or his dragon of a mother, chase you off the dance floor? I tell you what—we’ll go back together, after we’ve finished this very fine drink, and dance the reel. Our mutual antipathy for this society must recommend us as partners. And I can assure you, I know very well how to keep my hands to myself. I’m also trusting you, unlike the rest of the young ladies out there, to be just as loyal and silent when I tread all over your feet.”

His reward for this display of teasing, self-deprecating charm was the full-throated richness of her laugh. “I should very much have liked to have had that pleasure. But I have been banned from the ballroom not by Mr. Stubbs-Haye, or his mother, but by
my
dragon of a mother, and none other than Lady Barrington herself. I’m being made to stay away so no breath of scandal touches my sister. I’m to do the impossible—for me anyway—keep mum, keep
my
hands to myself, and keep myself out of trouble.”

“Do you often get yourself into trouble? Apart from sneaking off to drink cognac with appalling acquaintances?”

“Oh, always. Apparently I am just full of inappropriate, indelicate, hoydenish behavior.”

Inappropriate? William’s mind leaped to several alarming but highly entertaining conjectures as to how inappropriately she was prepared to behave. Most included a mental image of her delightful derrière. He yanked his glance back to the safety of the fireplace and forced himself to take a deep steadying breath. And another steadying drink.

“For my own part,” she continued, blithely unaware of the inappropriate forces at play in his body, “I will admit only to reading forbidden books, speaking my opinion too freely, laughing too loudly, riding my horse too fast, and of course embarrassing myself upon the dance floor with Mr. Stubbs-Haye.”

“I should do more, if I were you.”

“What do you mean?”

It must have been the mellow effect of the brandy. Will never would have espoused such a philosophy otherwise. On board ship, he had long ago outgrown the kind of pranks that had once gotten him into trouble. But back in England, where all the tedious, nonsensical rules of so-called Polite Society didn’t really mean anything, an idea was taking root in his brain.

“Why bother attempting the impossible?” He leaned back and crossed his boots negligently at the ankles, adopting his best devil-may-care attitude. “I would just as soon enjoy myself if I knew I was already in trouble.”

The smile that spread slowly across her face was nearly incandescent with the dawning of her happiness. “Why, thank you, Jellicoe. You’ve just given me the most wonderful, appalling idea.”

Chapter Five

“Happy to be of service,” Jellicoe answered with a small, ironic salute. “After all, what are appalling acquaintances for?”

Antigone had never had an acquaintance who was a man, let alone a handsome, funny, friendly young man who seemed to have been sent down from heaven just to make her laugh. That first moment he had appeared in the room she had been entirely resentful at his intrusion. True, she had been startled at hearing him enter, but he had proved to be the exception to the evening’s rule—an actual gentleman. Standing there, impossibly tall and lean and sandy blond—ridiculously handsome—with the inborn grace of an aristocrat, his coat and cravat carelessly, unforgivably impeccable, she had feared he would treat her with the same condescension as the other ballroom jackasses.

To her complete astonishment he had not. He had given her a roguish, conspiratorial grin. It was a little lopsided, that grin, as if he were having too much fun to take the time to engage both sides of his mouth.

And from that moment, the idea of being punished for something she hadn’t done—well, she
had
punched the daylights out of Mr. Stubbs-Haye, but it was
his
fault—took on a rather liberating slant.

If she were to be talked about, and have her name whispered behind fans, then she would give them something better than one small disaster on the dance floor. If she was already mad, bad, and dangerous to know, why should she not have all the pleasure of actually
being
bad, and doing exactly as she bloody well pleased? Of putting her own wants before Mama’s overreaching needs. Of being the irredeemable hoyden she had been named?

Drinking forbidden brandy with strange men was just a start.

For the first time in months, since her mama had roped her into this farce, Antigone felt almost free. It was actually rather lovely—to be sitting in the dark firelight, with a man not of her family, drinking superior cognac and discussing any topic that came into her head. The small rush of pleasure made her giddy, as if she were drunk from the brandy, intoxicated with the very idea of such freedom.

But just as if she had spoken her reckless resolution aloud, and broadcast it for all of Hampshire and West Sussex to hear, taunting the world with her challenge, the answering omen came.

The door to the hallway surged and rattled against the barrier of the flimsy lock and tilted chair. Then two sharp raps sounded against the panel. “Miss Antigone? Are you in there?”

Lord Aldridge.

Antigone bolted to her feet. Confounded, interfering, odious man.

She cut her gaze away from the door to Will Jellicoe, who appeared only mildly perturbed, and was looking back at her with a mixture of reserve and expectation—a what-now-my-appalling-friend kind of look that made her want to laugh in spite of their potentially scandalous predicament.

“Bloody hell. You’ll have to hide,” she whispered, making great shooing motions with her hands. There was no time to explain why. She didn’t fully understand the instinct to keep her budding friendship—if indeed that was what it was—with Will Jellicoe a secret, when she had just decided she didn’t care who knew—only that she must.

But her appalling acquaintance kindly made no protest, and was up and moving with admirable swiftness toward the windows, throwing up the sash with ease. He made as if to stick his head out into the rain-lashed night.

“No,” she whispered fiercely, and grabbed his arm to stop him. His astonishingly firm muscles flexed beneath her fingers. “It’s too far down. And it’s pouring rain to boot.”

“Where then?” Even in such a trying circumstance, there was a twist of a smile on his face, and a warm haze of humor in his low voice, as if he saw the idiocy and futility in trying to hide, but was doing it anyway. To please her.

What a remarkable acquaintance he was proving to be. Steady and blessedly accommodating.

So where? Antigone spun around, quickly looking for more likely hiding spots. She might not have any reputation to preserve, but she was not about to expose such a remarkable new friend to the same ignominy. Or the potential machinations of her family. Her mother had already shown a remarkable proclivity for unloading her youngest daughter like so much unwanted freight. If Mama was thwarted in her plans for Lord Aldridge, who knew if she might not attempt the same on this poor, unsuspecting young man?

There were only two real choices—beneath the desk or behind the curtains to either side of the two long windows.

Jellicoe, smart, unwavering fellow that he was revealing himself to be, decided it for her. He shoved down the window sash. “Curtains.”

He was right. At his height, he’d never fit beneath the desk. The curtains were the only reasonable alternative on offer. She pushed him toward the second window, farther away from the door, and in greater darkness behind the obscuring bulk of the wingback chair. She tried to help by pulling back the heavy fall of damask so he might slide in behind, but the space was so small—perhaps too small for such a big man, squashed up between the chair and table and wall—that in such close confines, the material of his coat brushed against the exposed skin on the inside of her outthrust arm.

And in that heady moment, she could feel the warm, solid heat of his chest through the soft weave of the wool material all along the long length of her arm. And she could feel herself tipping, falling toward it. Toward him. Toward his solid, reassuring warmth.

“Steady on. Handsomely, now,” Jellicoe muttered under his breath, with that same almost roguish smile crooking up one corner of his mouth. He captured her hand, as if he meant to keep her from falling, or perhaps pull her in to hide with him. “You’re not going to faint, are you? Maybe the cognac has gone to your head.”

“No. I don’t faint. I’ve never fainted.” She said it twice, to convince herself. Because for the first time in her life, her legs did feel suspiciously swimmy. She shook her head again, both to persuade him, and to settle her brains to rights. She had to keep her wits about her if she was to deal effectively with someone as clever and insistent as Lord Aldridge.

“I’ve got to answer him,” she mouthed. But she also had to lean in, to make sure Jellicoe could hear her whispered explanation. That was it. It wasn’t because she wanted to be near to him. Near his sheltering warmth. Of course not. She had only just met the man. “He’ll expect it.”

“Yes.” His smile moved around his mouth, from one side to the other, looking for a home, before it came to rest gently somewhere in the middle. He nodded at her and said, “Courage.”