Alyssa Everett (2 page)

“Yes, surely there’s a simple explanation.” Cliburne’s brown eyes were imploring.

How could Helen treat such a sweet boy so shabbily? Cliburne reminded me of a puppy, the kind that’s no sooner been kicked than it comes crawling back on its belly to lick its master’s boots. His cousin, on the other hand, called to mind a panther on a cliff top—magnificent, threatening, and accustomed to looking down on everyone, mostly with the intention of tearing them to pieces.

“I want to tell you, Teddy, but I can’t.” Helen’s bottom lip trembled. “If you won’t trust me, I suppose you’ll just have to call off the wedding.” With a convincing sob, she leaped up and bolted from the room.

Poor Cliburne shot to his feet and hurried after her, followed closely by both my parents.

An uncomfortable silence settled over the room as Lord Beningbrough and I sat alone together, waiting for the others to return. With things going so badly for Helen, I’d known it was only a matter of time before she made a spectacular exit. In her whole life, Helen had never failed to avoid punishment. Usually, she relied on her uncanny ability to cry at will, a talent I’d envied all those times our governess had made me stand in the corner with my face to the wall. I’d always been too proud to let anyone see me cry.

Across from me, Lord Beningbrough’s eyes ranged over the room.

“It’s dreadful, isn’t it?” I ventured after a time. “Mama’s taste in furnishings, I mean.”

“I wouldn’t know.” He leaned back and crossed his arms. “I never notice frippery things like that.”

Ah. A typical man, in other words—dull and unobservant. “Even so, you must have noticed the color, at least. It’s such a lurid shade of...”

His clear gray eyes met mine, and the word went right out of my head.

“Red,” he supplied after a moment.

I blushed. “Er, yes, but there’s a name for this particular shade. It’s...um...”

“Red.”

“It’s puce,” I said, nettled. “And not only that, but the rug doesn’t match.”

He simply grunted his indifference and examined his fingernails. After a time, obviously more to fill the silence than out of any real civility, he said, “I wonder what’s keeping them.”

“It’s quite a tangle.”

He gave another grunt, though this time it seemed to denote agreement. “At least now you may beat your sister to the altar.”

I sat up straighter, an angry flush suffusing my cheeks. Of course, that was exactly what everyone would think, exactly what everyone would say. As if marriage were all I cared about and my only hope of making a good showing depended upon Helen’s retiring from the field. “For your information, I have no wish to wed, and no intention of doing so. Ever.”

“Indeed.”

“What do you mean, saying
indeed
in that doubtful fashion?”

He sighed as if the whole subject wearied him. “It’s not the first time I’ve heard a girl make such a statement, that’s all. Young ladies often pretend they’ve no interest in matrimony, simply to lure an unsuspecting bachelor into letting down his guard. It rarely works, of course, since only a Johnny Raw would fall for such a ploy.”

He really was an insufferable oaf, for all his fine looks. “It so happens my grandmother Merton left me nearly five thousand pounds a year. Why should I wish to shackle myself to some insensitive clod, only to have him pocket my money and order me about for the rest of my life?”

At mention of my five thousand a year, a little of the hauteur went out of Beningbrough’s manner. He peered sidelong at me with narrowed eyes, as if it had never occurred to him until that moment that I might actually be sincere. “Well, at least you have the freedom to follow your inclination,” he conceded after a pause. “You may count yourself lucky. For my part, I have a duty to produce an heir. If I ever marry, that’ll be the
only
reason.”

I sniffed. “If that’s the only reason you intend to marry, I pity your future wife.”

“You needn’t. I plan to spend as little time in her company as possible.”

“Then I hope she’s fully cognizant of her good fortune.”

Again his gray eyes narrowed. “Are you this impertinent to every man you meet?”

“Are you this rude to every lady you call on?”

“I didn’t come here to call on
you
.”

“In that case, I do count myself lucky.”

We glared at each other.

Finally he snatched up his curled beaver hat, stood and bowed stiffly. “Good day, Lady Barbara. If you don’t mind, I believe I’ll seek out my cousin.”

“I don’t mind in the least, Lord Beningbrough.”

The picture of masculine ire, he strode straight-legged across the room, flung open the door and stalked out.

If I hadn’t found him so thoroughly irritating, I might have applauded, for he was as gifted as Helen at making highly theatrical exits.

Ben

When I arrived home, I hoped to slip by my mother, but she must have been watching the front door like a cat at a mousehole. I’d no sooner crossed the threshold than she came skimming down the stairs, a small woman with an elegant salt-and-pepper coiffure, twinkling blue eyes and a relentlessly attentive air.

“Ah, there you are, darling!” she exclaimed, descending on me as I paused to examine the post on the hall table. “Do tell me you weren’t walking around Town without a greatcoat.”

Out of long-established habit, I bent lower so she could kiss my cheek. “I didn’t need one. It’s nearly May, and the sun is out.”

“But you could catch your death of cold!”

“I’m not going to catch cold. I’m a grown man, Mama. I think I know when to wear a greatcoat.”

“But, Benny—”

I gritted my teeth against a sudden rush of irritation. “For the thousandth time, please don’t call me that. Call me Ben or Beningbrough or even James, but I refuse to answer to Benny.”

“But what’s wrong with
Benny?
I used to call you that when you were only as high as your papa’s knee, running around the house with your hair in long black ringlets.”

“That’s precisely what’s wrong with it.”

Frowning, she began fussing with the Belcher handkerchief I wore in place of a cravat. “Oh, Ben, dear, you’re too sensitive.”

“I’m not
sensitive.
I just don’t want to be treated like a two-year-old.” I drew back from her fluttering hands. “And please stop doing that.”

“I’m only straightening your clothes. Why you must go about all the time looking like an unmade bed is beyond me. You used to dress so beautifully before you went away to school.”

Which was one of the many reasons I had the stuffing pounded out of me on a daily basis at Eton. School was still a sore subject with me. For the first eleven years of my life, I’d been the privileged only child of a ducal household, guided by watchful tutors and hovered over by indulgent parents. Then my fencing master convinced my father that the bracing atmosphere of public school would be the making of me. I’d been packed off to Mrs. Burton’s oppidan house, blissfully unaware that I looked a priceless ass with my tumbled curls and my velvet coats and my bubbling enthusiasms.

From the moment the family carriage rattled away, homesickness hit me like an avalanche. Dining with the other boys of the house for the first time, I thought about all I’d left back home at Greybridge—my mother, my father, the friends and servants I’d grown up with, everything inviting and familiar—and I’d had to swallow down a lump in my throat. As soon as the Dame who ran the house left the room to have a word with the cook, one of the boys sitting across from me elbowed his neighbor in the ribs and gestured toward me with a tilt of his head.

“I think he’s going to cry.”

The second boy snickered.

I sat up straighter and squared my shoulders. “I wasn’t going to cry.”

“Are you sure?” the first boy said. He had a long face and bushy brown hair, and though I overtook him a few years later, at the time he was significantly bigger than I. “Because you look like a mama’s boy.”

I flushed angrily. “I wasn’t going to cry.”

“Did you hear that, Rigsby?” said the second boy. “He never said he wasn’t a mama’s boy.”

Pushing my homesickness aside, I looked down my nose at them. “Do you know who I am?”

“‘Do you know who I am?’” the boy named Rigsby mocked in a girlish voice, imitating my accent. “So who are you, princess?”

I ignored the jibe. “I’m Beningbrough, and my father is the Duke of Ormesby.”

Until that moment, both names had always been words to conjure with, but Rigsby simply burst into laughter. “In that case,” he said with the air of one settling an argument once and for all, “your father is a bugger.”

I was still so green and ignorant I not only failed to recognize the word but also lacked the good sense to keep my mouth shut. “A what?”

“A bugger. A back-door gentleman.” Rigsby leaned over the table to deal the coup de grâce. “A sodomite.”

“What’s a sodomite?”

Now Rigsby’s friend was laughing. “Oh, give over, Beningbrough.
You
know. Your father does it with men.”

“Does what with men?”

“He rogers them, you lackwit!” Rigsby crowed, as the other boys at the table joined in the laughter. “Or they roger him. You know, the same as a man and a woman in bed together, only he plays the part of the girl. Your father’s a Miss Molly!”

I could only stare back at him, so shocked that it was as if the breath had been sucked forcibly from my chest. Here, at least, were words I recognized. I had a pretty fair idea what
rogering
meant, and
molly
was one of the most powerful insults I knew, a word reserved for cowards, weaklings and man-milliners.

Don’t be ridiculous, I wanted to tell Rigsby, my father is handsome and clever and charming. He knows all there is to know about important things like astronomy and natural history and why Prince Rupert lost the Battle of Naseby. All my life, I’d looked up to my father. But in one sickening instant, scattered pieces fell into place—the cryptic conversations I’d overheard between my mother and my aunts; the odd, knowing looks I’d sometimes spotted on the servants’ faces; the way my former tutor had been assigned the room next to my father’s. I even understood why my father set such store by my fencing master’s advice.

With the scales fallen from my eyes, I’d spent the rest of the day feeling as if I might vomit. And that sickening, eye-opening day was only the first in a long series of trials. Whether thanks to my father’s reputation or simply because some wag took exception to my face, the other boys soon singled me out for a peculiar form of torment. Whenever I walked by, they would leer, make kissing noises, and shout catcalls.

“Looking fetching today, sweetheart.”

“Why, Beningbrough, my dear, you get prettier all the time.”

“Come on, princess, throw us a kiss!”

Most of the time I ignored it, but now and then something would snap inside me and I would launch myself at my nearest persecutor. That first year I must have set a school record with the number of bloody noses I received. The second year, I charged into just as many skirmishes—but experience is a great teacher, and I began to acquit myself a little better. By the third year, I won more fights than I lost. By the fourth, I’d developed such a reputation for drawing my classmates’ corks that the bullying had all but stopped.

Still, I could never forget that first day and Rigsby’s gleeful announcement that my father was a sodomite. Every time I caught a classmate staring at me, every time a hush fell over a room when I entered, every time laughter erupted in my wake, I knew what the other boys were thinking.

“So, how is your cousin?” my mother asked, breaking me out of my reverie.

“Not so well. He’s run into trouble with that girl he asked to marry him. It seems she has a roving eye, and it’s already roved to the neighbors’ footman.”

“Poor Teddy.”

“Save your sympathy, Mama. I went with him expressly so he could break off the engagement, but the girl had only to shed a few crocodile tears and
he
ended up apologizing to
her.
” I shook my head in disgust. “He’ll live to regret it.”

My mother’s expression softened. “Now, don’t be too hard on him, Ben, dear. He’s in love, and people in love think with their hearts, not their heads.”

I knew it would do no good to point out to her what a nonsensical philosophy that was, so I simply gave a cynical grunt.

“I suppose you two dined at your club?”

“No, Teddy decided to stay and have dinner with the Leonards, so I came directly home.”

My mother paled. “Oh, Ben dear, no! Lady Cleary’s only son used to skip dinner, and you know what happened to him. He died of consumption.”

“I suspect you have the cause and the effect confused.”

“Well, I don’t want you risking it. Only think how upset I should be if you were to begin coughing up blood.”

“I doubt I should enjoy it much either.”

She smoothed my lapels and gave me a pat. “Well, then, you must let Lawson bring you a sandwich. Why don’t you go and get changed for bed, and I’ll have it sent up to your room?”

“Get changed for bed? It’s barely seven-thirty.”

“I thought you could use a little rest. You’ve been out all day.”

With an effort, I held my exasperation in check. “I’m not an invalid, Mama. I’m twenty-eight and I’ve never been sick a day in my life. I’ll be in the library.”

Chewing on a ham sandwich fifteen minutes later, I took down a copy of the
Peerage
from the library shelf. Idly, I flipped to the entry on the Leonards.

William Richard Jeffords, 5th Earl Leonard, succeeded his brother, John Littleton Jeffords, 4th Earl, 8 March 1804: born 7 October 1767, married, 12 June 1791, Eleanor, daughter of John Merton, 3rd Baron Merton, of Badgely Abbey, Wilts, and has issue, 1. John Merton Jeffords, Viscount Rowland, b. 10 May 1792; 2. Hon. William Robert Jeffords, b. 2 March 1794; 3. Lady Barbara Elizabeth Jeffords, b. 2 February 1796; 4. Lady Helen Catherine Jeffords, b. 24 July 1799; 5. Hon. Edmund James Jeffords, b. 10 November 1803.

I ran my finger over Lady Barbara’s name. So she was twenty-four years old. It was a pity she had such a tart tongue. If I closed my eyes, I could almost see her before me—that porcelain complexion, those challenging green eyes, that shining red hair, the firm swell of those perfect breasts...