Educating Caroline (31 page)

“Yes.” The word was a hiss in the darkness. “Tommy.”

“Yes. Tommy. And then there’s—” She shook her head, her hair, mussed from his rough contact with it, coming down from its pins. She couldn’t tell him, of course. She couldn’t tell him what she’d come to realize. It was too humiliating. But she could tell him part of it. “I saw Lady Jacquelyn this afternoon, and—”

He was up and off the swing in a second.

“And what?” he demanded, urgently. “What did she say to you?”

“She thinks . . .” Caroline said to her feet, perfectly unable to meet his gaze. “She thinks . . .”

He told himself not to panic. There was no telling what lies Jackie might have told her. She was capable of anything. But it couldn’t have been that bad, or Caroline would never have allowed what had just happened on that swing. “Tell me what she said.”

“She said . . . oh, Braden. Don’t you see? If we do this, why, I’ll be no better than she is.”

He relaxed. Guilt. That was all. Jacquelyn hadn’t told her anything. Caroline was suffering from nothing more than a guilty conscience.

“Well,” he said. “I wouldn’t worry about it, sweetheart. Whatever she said, she only said because she’s jealous. She’s seen how I look at you. She must know—”

Caroline wrenched away from him. “But don’t you see?” she cried. “What does that make
me?
Something horrible! You and I aren’t any better than Jacquelyn and . . . her lover are. We might be even worse, because for all we know, Jacquelyn and . . . the man I saw her with might be in love. They might not have been able to help themselves. They might feel an uncontrollable passion for one another, a burning passion they have to deny, while we’re—”

He quirked up an eyebrow. “We’re . . . ?”

“We’re just playing a game.” Caroline spoke to the garden floor.

He regarded her profile thoughtfully. “Is that what you think this is, then? A game?”

Not to me.
That’s what she wanted to say. But Lady Jacquelyn’s words were still too fresh in her mind. A game. It was all just a great game to him. And she was too naive, too inexperienced to have known better. No, she’d had to go and fall in love with him, and ruin it.

Finally, she felt able to look at him without weeping. “Well,” she said. “What else would you call it? It’s not as if you and I are . . . madly in love with each other.”

“Aren’t we?”

The question was so softly put that at first she wasn’t certain she’d heard him right. It was as if the leaves, moving in the light breeze over their heads, had sighed the question, not him.

But it had been him. Unquestionably it had been him. She could see it in the way he looked at her, expectantly waiting an answer. She could see it in the tense way he held himself, ready to spring forward, it seemed, and snatch her up again, and make her feel and feel—oh, the things he made her feel!

And all of a sudden, she was afraid, more afraid than she’d ever remembered feeling. Two little words—
Aren’t we?
—and her world, which he’d already managed to turn upside down, went plunging yet again, around and around until she did not know left from right, night from day, up from down.

And then, quite suddenly, everything righted itself again, when Sylvester Granville popped up on the terrace just off the library.

“Braden, my boy,” he called.
“There
you are. I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Heard another rumor today about that letter of patent. I say, who’s that you’ve got there with you, eh? Lady Jacquelyn?”

Braden anticipated her flight a split second too late. He stepped forward, knowing she would run, reaching out to seize her shoulders to prevent it. . . .

And found himself clutching only air. Caroline, her skirts hiked up nearly to her knees, was dashing away from him, toward the silhouette his father made against the library windows.

“Oh,” she cried, as she ran. “Oh, Mr. Granville, it’s me, Caroline Linford. Would you mind terribly—could I trouble you to call a hack to take me home, please?”

“Caroline,” Braden said. He could not quite believe this. He could not quite believe this was happening, and in this way.

She ignored him, and raced up the stone steps to the terrace.

If Sylvester Granville was surprised to see Lady Caroline Linford barreling toward him through the warm evening air, he didn’t show it. Instead, he laid down the Baronetage, which he’d been carrying, and patted the hands Caroline had wrapped tightly around his arm.

“Of course, my lady,” he said. “Whatever you wish. But we needn’t call you a hack. I’m sure my son’s driver would be only too happy to take you home. Would you like for me to escort you?”

“Oh, yes,” Caroline said, throwing a nervous glance over her shoulder. Braden was now climbing the same steps she’d just raced up, wearing an expression which she found forbidding, to say the least. She turned quickly back toward Sylvester. “If we could go at once . . .” she said, the urgency in both her tone and the grip with which she held his arm mounting.

“Caroline,” Braden said, his deep voice cutting through the night air.

Sylvester, however, was enjoying his newfound role of champion, and said, “I’m taking Lady Caroline home now, Braden. I’ll see you when I return.”

Braden ignored the older man, addressing Caroline, instead.

“This isn’t over, you know,” he assured her, in his lowest, steadiest voice.

If Caroline heard him, however, she gave no indication. She continued to cling to the elder Granville, allowing him to lead her through the house and toward the front door, where the carriage he’d called soon pulled around.

“Did you hear me, Caroline?” Braden demanded, with feelings of increasing desperation, as he followed the pair. “Did you hear what I said?”

At the carriage door, Sylvester turned, having handed the Lady Caroline safely into the vehicle. “My boy,” he said, with a chuckle. “Of course she heard you. But she’s obviously a bit put out with you right now. I’d leave it, if I were you. You know how women are. Call upon her in the morning. I’m sure she’ll be pleased to hear from you by then.”

And then Sylvester banged on the brougham’s ceiling, and the vehicle rolled away, taking Caroline with it.

It is doubtful that in all its years of existence, Park Lane ever heard language the likes of which Braden Granville let loose at that particular moment.

27

J
acquelyn was sitting at her dressing table, practicing facial expressions in a great, gilt-framed mirror: this was the expression she’d wear when Braden Granville turned at their marriage ceremony and presented her with the emerald and diamond-encrusted wedding ring she’d requested; this was the one she’d wear when she pulled off her glove and flashed that ring in Lady Caroline Linford’s face, first opportunity she got.

She was deeply absorbed in the expression she’d wear while receiving the necklace that matched the wedding ring as a first anniversary gift, when quite suddenly, the door to her bedroom—which Jacquelyn always carefully locked whilst she was preparing her toilette, for fear someone might actually catch her without her rouge on—burst open.

Not just burst open, but exploded open, flying right off its hinges and splintering apart. Jacquelyn let out a shriek and clutched the marabou trim of her wrapper tightly to her naked chest.

But Braden Granville, who was apparently the person who’d knocked the door down, since he was the one who came stepping across its wreckage, appeared not in the least interested in Jacquelyn’s state of undress.

“Well, Jackie,” he said, as soon as he’d safely crossed the recently created sea of wood shards and brass hinges. “What did you say to her, then?”

Jacquelyn looked from the ruins of her bedroom door to the dangerous expression on Braden Granville’s face, and then back again. She apparently considered it safer to address the damage he’d just done than his question, since she said, with a good deal of indignation, “Braden! Really! It’s a jolly good thing my father’s dead, or he’d quite call you out for such boorish behavior. As it is, I suppose the staff are suffering apoplexies out in the hallway. Did you do the same to the front door, as well?”

“I did not,” Braden said. “Your mother let me in herself.”

Jacquelyn rolled her eyes. “She would. But I highly doubt she knew you were going to break down my bedroom door.”

Braden Granville, however, said only, “What did you say to Caroline Linford when you saw her today at Worth’s?”

“Caroline Linford?” Jacquelyn knit her brows, looking at Braden as if he’d just stepped from Bedlam, and not from his fashionable residence, which in a scant few weeks, would also be hers . . . if she played her cards close enough to her chest.
“Caroline Linford?
You broke down my door to ask me a question about
Caroline Linford?”

“That’s right,” Braden said, coolly. “You heard me. What the devil did you say to her?”

Jacquelyn stared at him. She had heard, of course, that Braden Granville’s temper was a dangerous thing—as dangerous as one of his pistols, in the wrong hands. But she had never actually witnessed firsthand one of her future husband’s rages. It was, she saw now, not a pretty sight. Braden Granville was all that was manly, it was true, but he wasn’t handsome. And when his face, as it was just then, was twisted with wrath—the muscles in his square jaw leaping, that devilish-looking eyebrow, the one with the scar, lifted practically to his hairline—it was downright frightening.

“I only told her the truth,” she said, defensively. She had not risen from her dressing table, but could only sit on the tasseled stool before it, quite immobile with fear.

“The truth?” Braden Granville looked at her with something she could only call contempt. “And what, Jackie, is your version of the truth this week?”

She blinked at him, rather surprised to find that tears had sprung to her eyes. Really. Tears! Jacquelyn hadn’t cried for years, not since her father died, and only then because she’d realized she hadn’t anyone left to apply to for money on a weekly basis. Feeling that this was almost too good to be true, Jacquelyn let out a slurpy sob, and cried, “Oh! Why must you be so cruel?”

Braden did not look particularly impressed by these theatrics. He said, “Jackie, if you don’t want me to do to you what I did to that door, you had better tell me the truth.”

This, Jacquelyn felt, was simply too much. Her tears forgotten, she stood up, pulling her dressing gown tightly around her—tightly enough so that no curve of her body was left unseen.

“You brute,” she said, with a haughty toss of her head. “I knew you’d strike me one day. You’re all the same, you lot from the Dials. You think beating a woman is the only way to exert your power over her.”

Braden looked as unimpressed by this speech as he’d been by her tears. “Personally,” he said, “I prefer extortion to physical violence, where women are concerned. Jacquelyn, if you don’t tell me what you said to Caroline Linford this afternoon, the wedding’s off.”

Jacquelyn’s jaw dropped. This was not an occasion for which she’d practiced an expression beforehand. The one she wore, therefore, was not one of her best.

“What?”
she cried, her voice breaking on the word.

“You heard me,” Braden said, grimly. “Tell me what you told her.”

“You can’t—” Jacquelyn forgot to clutch her dressing gown closed. Instead, her hands dropped slowly to her sides. So great was her shock, that she did not even realize it.

“You . . .” she breathed. “You can’t call off the wedding.”

“Actually,” Braden said, “I can. Now tell me.”

“I’ll sue.” Jacquelyn blinked. “In court. I’ll file for breach of promise.”

He made an impatient gesture. “Be my guest. It doesn’t matter anymore. Just tell me what you said to her.”

“Doesn’t matter?” She hurried across the room, not so unconscious now of her nudity beneath the dressing gown. Quite the contrary. She was pleased that the diaphanous material would make her nakedness beneath all too apparent to him. “How can you say that, Braden? Is that what you want? To see your name in the papers, not because of some new invention of yours, but because you’re being sued by your former fiancée?”

He shook his head, in the irritated manner of someone who is being bothered by a mosquito. “I don’t care anymore, Jackie,” he said. “None of that matters to me. It used to, I’ll admit it. The idea of paying you a ha’penny galled me to the core. But now—” Lightwood wouldn’t be pleased with this one, but he went on anyway, realizing now that it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, except Caroline. “I’d consider it money well spent, if it rids me of you forever.”

She was genuinely shocked. It was a blow to her feminine pride. She said the first words that came to her mind. “But I love you,” she murmured.

He held up a hand to silence her. “Not that, Jackie,” he said. “You were doing so well before.”

She couldn’t help herself. “But it’s true. I know you don’t want to hear it. God knows, the Lothario of London has never uttered those three words before, to any woman. But they’re true. I love you.”

He looked down at her curiously. “Now, that’s going a bit too far, don’t you think? Love me? No, Jacquelyn. It’s better this way. The wedding’s off.”

Jacquelyn reached out and seized him by the lapels of his coat. “All right,” she cried, desperately. “I’ll tell you what I told her, the Lady Caroline, at Worth’s today.”

He smiled down at her, a soothing smile, a smile that almost made him look handsome.

“Ah,” he said. “That’s more like it. Well. What, then?”

“It was nothing, really,” Jacquelyn said, with a nervous laugh. “I suppose it was a bit cruel, but I’ve known her since we were at school together, and you know how girls will tease one another—”

“Yes,” Braden said. “I imagine Caroline was teasing you terribly, and you had no choice but to retaliate.”

His sarcasm was lost on Lady Jacquelyn, who said, “Well, of course. That’s precisely how it went. I was rather put out, and so I threw it up in her face, the fact that she’s so painfully in love with you—”

But Braden had reached out, and suddenly was gripping her by the arms.

“What,” he said, between gritted teeth, “ did you say?”

“To Lady Caroline?” Then, seeing his expression, she said, in genuine astonishment, “Oh, don’t tell me you didn’t know, dearest. You can see it in her eyes anytime your name is mentioned. Caroline always had the most useless eyes. You can read her thoughts in her least little glance—”

His grip tightened.

“And what did she say?” he demanded, giving her a little-shake. “What did Caroline say, when you told her this?”

“Well, she denied it, of course, darling.” Jacquelyn looked down at his hands. “Braden, you’re wrinkling my robe, you know.”

“Denied it?”

“Well, of course she
would
deny it. Embarrassed, of course. I mean, as I very well pointed out to her, what would the great Braden Granville want with little Lady Caroline Linford? After all—the Lothario of London, and sweet innocent Lady Caroline? It’s perfectly ludicrous. Of course, she said something about how she thought you might possibly return her feelings—” Here Jacquelyn was embroidering a little upon the truth, but she wanted to see how Braden reacted. How he reacted would tell her all. “—but I told her you were only playing your little game with her, of course.”

He released her so abruptly, she staggered, tripping over a piece of the door.
“A game,”
he murmured. “Oh, God.”

So. She straightened, and reached down for the sash to her dressing gown. It was just as she suspected. Really, she thought to herself. Who’d have thought it? The great man himself, conquered by that peculiar, horsey girl.

Well, it wouldn’t last. Jacquelyn would see to that.

“Well, of course I told her that, darling,” she said, reaching up to smooth the hair he’d mussed when he’d shaken her so savagely. “I mean, what would you expect me to tell her? It’s the truth, isn’t it? What possible interest could you have in Caroline Linford? I mean, she’s so dull. And, after all, pet—” Here Jacquelyn’s eyelids drooped suggestively, and her voice dropped to a purr. “You belong to me.”

There was something almost contemptuous in his expression when he looked at her then. But that, of course, was impossible. And yet . . .

“Not anymore,” he said, and then he turned, and headed toward the now gaping doorway.

Panic, stronger than any hand, clutched at Jacquelyn’s throat. Darting forward, she seized him by the sleeve and cried, “But, Braden, darling, what can you mean by that? You said, quite plainly, that if I told you what Caroline and I talked about, you’d still go through with the wedding!”

He glanced down at her, just once. He said, “You should know better, Jacks, than to believe something one of my lot from the Dials ever said.”

And then, with a brief crunching of wood splinters beneath his feet, he was gone.