Gentlemen Prefer Mischief (12 page)

Ian was sitting to her right, but for once her brother’s lighthearted conversation didn’t engage her.

“You are rather dull tonight,” he said after the main meal had been cleared and they addressed themselves to dishes of sliced pears. “I hope you are not ill?”

“Not in the least.”

He lowered his voice. “You and Hal seemed to be having an intense conversation in the gallery.”

Warmth stole up her neck. Their conversation had felt so intimate—more so, even, than the kiss they’d shared in her room. “We were merely discussing family history.”

“Is that so?” He sounded skeptical.

“We talked about some old ring belonging to his uncles that went missing years ago.”

As she said these words, it dawned on her that what Nate was looking for in the woods might be the ring. It had apparently disappeared some time ago. But it seemed so very unlikely that such a costly heirloom would be given away by anyone in the family that she decided it couldn’t be what he was looking for.

“Yes, I remember something about that. Hal used to want to look for it when we were children. He had a real fascination for it.”

She had an image then of Hal as a boy, his face set in the serious way of children with some mission to accomplish, next in line behind a beloved brother who would always be more important than he was, and it tugged at her heart though she didn’t want it to. She wondered if his childhood had anything to do with how very adept he’d become at charming people.

Ian gave her a shrewd look. “Are you certain there is nothing between you and Hal?”

“Ian…” she said with a note of warning in her voice.

“Good, good,” he said with a relieved grin. Though she couldn’t imagine why he thought this was so very good, she didn’t linger on the thought because she was watching Donwell brush the crumbs off his coat sleeves—they seemed to be scattered up to his elbow—and wondering how she could get Eloise to linger and talk with him.

But Eloise was already standing up and trailing after the earl, and as she watched her go, Lily couldn’t avoid Hal’s gaze.

“Will you join the card party, Lily?” he asked as she passed near where he stood by the door.

“No, thank you,” she said. “I do not care for cards.”

“Of course you don’t,” he said, and she’d never wanted anything so much as she wanted right then to wipe the smirk off his face. The sound of his wicked laughter as she walked past him made her gnash her teeth.

After breakfast the next morning, Eloise did not want to linger in the breakfast room—Ivorwood had just left, on his way to finish some correspondence in his chamber, he’d said, and that meant an opportunity for her to walk with him to his room. But Lily had stood when she stood, and now she seemed intent on engaging her in conversation.

The only other people left in the breakfast room were Hal, who was talking to the butler at the far end of the table, and Donwell, apparently examining the likeness of a goat in a painting on the other side of the room. After the irritating way he’d behaved while Lily was sketching them, she had little wish to spend any time in his presence. She thought she’d felt him looking at her a few times across the dinner table the night before, and she hoped he wasn’t lurking about with the desire to speak with her.

Lily had apparently just asked her a question while she was calculating the likelihood of catching up to Ivorwood, and what they might talk about if she did. Still waters were said to run deep, and the earl was so reserved and handsome and mysterious that she just knew he was thinking fascinating things.

“I’m sorry?” Eloise said.

“I was saying that I haven’t been to the conservatory yet. Might you have a moment to show it to me this morning?”

Repressing a sigh, Eloise smiled. “Of course. Shall we go right now?”

“Yes. I wonder if anyone else would like to join us?” Lily said, turning as if to include Donwell in the invitation. He didn’t turn around.

“Oh, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Eloise muttered. After the disastrous posing episode, she’d spent more time than she’d cared to thinking about Donwell. In particular, she’d remembered a conversation she’d had with him at a house party just before she’d left for the Continent.

Though she’d been in company with Donwell any number of times—he was a good friend of Hal’s—she’d never paid much attention to him before then. But he’d happened on her sitting in the garden, and they’d begun to talk about nature. He was very interested in the night sky, and as he warmed to his subject, he’d become as impassioned as a poet. Though it was oddly intense, there had been something charming about his enthusiasm, and when he’d proposed that she bring a maid and come out to see the stars with him that night, she’d thought it sounded rather lovely. She’d even thought she might bring her paints and try to capture the heavens at night.

Then Ivorwood had arrived at the house party, and Donwell and his invitation had been as easily forgotten as five minutes spent brushing her hair. Perhaps not well done of her, but she didn’t like to think about it.

Hal thought Donwell was brilliant, which was a good thing for him, since Donwell had few social graces and only a small, apparently crumbling estate in Ireland. She supposed he deserved her compassion, but she didn’t feel inclined to give it to him now.

Lily gave her a furtive look. “He seems like such an interesting man. Did you know that he’s discovered a meteor or some such in the heavens?”

But Donwell was now moving toward the door. “Ladies, do please excuse me,” he said pleasantly, as though he hadn’t heard anything about the conservatory, or said outrageous things to her on the terrace. They stepped aside and let him pass through the door.

“I’m sorry,” Lily said, looking pained. “I thought you two might enjoy each other’s company. It was terribly interfering of me, only Mr. Donwell seems like just the sort of man I might have liked when I was your age.”

Eloise frowned. How could Lily not notice that Donwell wasn’t quite the thing? “I’m sure you meant well, but we don’t suit.”

“But he seems so engaging.”

“Perhaps it’s only me he doesn’t like.”

“I’m certain that’s not the case,” Lily said.

But Eloise just shrugged. “Did you really want to see the conservatory?”

“I really do,” Lily said.

As they were passing through the doorway, Hal called out, “Oh Lily.”

“Yes?” Lily said in an oddly impatient voice.

“It’s good to know when to surrender.”

Eloise thought that an odd thing for her brother to say to Lily, but then, she’d noticed that he was different around Lily, and she wondered if he fancied her. She didn’t seem like his sort of woman.

Strangely, it almost sounded as though Lily growled as they passed through the doorway.

***

The hour of the ball had finally come, and Lily and Delia were descending the grand staircase in the company of their brothers, who were very handsome in their black tailcoats and buckled dancing shoes. Delia’s gown looked marvelous on her, a pale cherry blossom silk with tiny white rosebuds at the bodice.

Lily’s gown of silvery white satin trimmed in silver cord whispered softly against her legs and kissed the tops of her silver slippers, which still had a faint scuff mark from four years before. A strand of silver cord meandered through her hair, which was piled neatly on top of her head with a few soft curls escaping.

The broken hum of stringed instruments being tuned drifted up the stairs. The foyer was alive with the sound of arrivals and merry voices and the soft tapping of dancing shoes on polished floors.

“How wondrous,” said Delia in awed tones as they entered the ballroom. Two enormous crystal chandeliers scattered gems of light over murmuring groups of richly dressed guests. “What a glow.”

Ian chuckled. “Glow is expensive.”

“So let’s enjoy it!” Delia tugged them all near the dance floor as the orchestra struck up a tune. Rob led Marianne Preston out, the white-haired vicar invited Delia, and Ian went to claim Eloise’s hand. Donwell was standing with another group some yards off, determinedly not looking at Eloise, Lily thought.

Across the room, Hal was talking with a group of people from Town, including Mrs. Whyte, who looked stunning in a bronze satin gown. Lily couldn’t help but notice he was giving the widow the same wicked half smile that made her own heart beat faster. She hated seeing him share it with someone else and hated that she cared at all. Though she wanted to look away, she made herself watch as a reminder that this was who he was, a handsome charmer.

She wasn’t alone for long, because at the end of the first dance Rob appeared at her side and presented Mr. Thomas Noone, who invited her to dance. Mr. Noone was followed by Mr. Bendick, a widower with six children.

While she danced, she reluctantly found herself noticing Hal’s succession of partners: the vicar’s doddering mother; Christabel Cox, who’d just turned fifteen and had the spots to prove it; and Mrs. Ramsay, an impoverished widow. No doubt he was beguiling them all.

Lily next found herself being danced feebly about by Sir John Chatham, who stared mutely over her head the entire time. All of her dancing partners had been introduced by one or the other of her brothers, and each had seemed eager to meet her. A veritable crop of willing suitors, but none of them gave her anywhere near the same feeling as…
as
what
? she demanded of herself.

But she knew what the
what
was, and it had to do with the way a certain very
imperfect
gentleman made her feel. Which made her annoyed with herself, and she was already beginning to fume by the time Mr. Noone asked her for a second dance. She declined kindly, but she
was
cross. Her brothers’ intention to marry her off couldn’t have been plainer: she was an aging lady in need of social charity. In need of marrying as soon as possible.

Was that how everyone saw her? Because that wasn’t how she saw herself.

She was only twenty! Why were they treating her like a spinster in her last good years?

Her shoulders slumped a little. Maybe because that was how she acted.

And she was so tired of the inner voice that was always judging her actions and thoughts. Her conscience wanted her to feel ashamed of her journal, of her attraction to Hal, of the time she spent on frivolous things that could have been used productively, of the tinge of anger that she felt toward a beloved father who wasn’t even alive. It wanted her to be ashamed of the way her body reacted to Hal, and it didn’t want her to admit that she wanted the things she did.

She watched the dancers and wished, strangely, that she were someone else. Someone like Eloise, who was so carefree, so willing to say and do just what she liked.

Free. Eloise was free, Delia was free, Mrs. Whyte was very free. But Lily always felt as though she were in an invisible cage she couldn’t escape—an internal cage whose bars became evident whenever she did the sorts of things that someone like Eloise did. No matter what she did, she would always be tormented by the restraints of her own shame and judgment. And that made her angry.

She closed her eyes and clenched her teeth and forced herself to relax. She would go and sit alone on the terrace and look at the stars and claim the peace that solitude brought.

“Might I have the pleasure of this dance, Lily?”

She opened her eyes, and there was Hal. She took in the ironic tilt of his mouth, the chiseled line of his jaw, and the way his black evening coat skimmed the tall, masculine frame underneath. Trouble in superfine.

She let his question hang, and he tilted his head. “Are you angry with me over our conversation yesterday? Or perhaps you are weighing whether I have some ulterior motive.”

That startled a laugh out of her, just when she was feeling so horrible. He was so
charming
. He was also, in ways she could not predict, dangerous to her, but she was certainly not afraid of him. And as he had already declared his intention to remain a bachelor until he was doddering, he was, in a way, safe, because no one could suppose he wanted to marry her.

Dancing with him would be thumbing her nose at everything that told her she shouldn’t, but peevish as she felt, the idea pleased her. Also, Hal was simply more entertaining than anyone else she knew. And suddenly, she felt so in need of that.

“Don’t you always?” she said, setting her hand on his arm. She thought of his talent for strategy and wondered if he really was up to something. She would relish a battle of wits just now, if it came to it.

They moved into place among the other dancers, and the dance began.

“I suppose you’re not going to admit that was part of your dress which was left on my bushes early yesterday morning,” he said in a low voice.

She tipped her head in a gesture of bemused innocence. Really, it was shameful, all the avoiding of truth she’d resorted to in the last week, but she couldn’t make herself care. “Why ever should I have been out by your woods yesterday morning, my lord?”

“Because you are trying to muddy my efforts to capture the Woods Fiend.”

The steps of the dance drew them apart then close, and he leaned in to her ear, his breath coming to her in a way that made her close her eyes for a moment just for the pleasure of absorbing it.

“You know,” he murmured, “I have the swatch of fabric in my pocket. We could settle right now whether it’s familiar.”

A little thrill ran around inside her. Probably her good sense fleeing.

“I think not.”

“I will not be bested in the matter of the Woods Fiend, Lily.”

Her only reply was a little smile. The steps of the dance separated them again, and she was at the same time dreading the moment that would bring them together again and anticipating it. She knew herself to be alive to his every word and movement.

Dear God, she’d been truly hooked by him again.

No. No! The effect he had on her was simply the effect that a very handsome and charming rogue had on a woman. Elderly ladies and happily married women found him irresistible; likely toddler misses and baby girls did, too. Female cats, certainly. But she was made of sterner stuff, and she could resist him if she wanted to.

To reassure herself, she looked at Ivorwood, who was dancing nearby, and tested herself against him, willed herself to feel for him something of what she felt for Hal. But just like all the other men she’d danced with that evening, Ivorwood had no effect on her.

“Finding something especially interesting about the earl, are you?” Hal said as they drew together again.

“He’s an interesting man.”
Old
Duffer, Old Duffer
, she chanted silently as the scent of Hal came to her again, seemed to
infiltrate
her. How could plain old clean smell so intoxicating? But the nice soap smell held other faint notes, liquor-like whiffs of manly scents that could only be Essence of Hal.

It was no use calling him Old Duffer in her mind, not when she could feel the leashed strength of his forearm under her hand, see the sturdy angle of his jaw and that masterful glint in his eyes. There was nothing aged or feeble or in any way repellent about him to discourage her. No, he was smart and kind and good with children and animals.

She wanted him. And maybe it would be better to simply accept that and stop fighting it. Fighting it was taking up a lot of energy. Delia was right: he was like a demigod, and weren’t mortals helpless before them?

Apart, together, the dance drew them. A tease, when every part of her was so attuned to the moment when her hand would be in his again.

“And how are your sheep, Lily?” he murmured as they rejoined. “I hope they are able to sleep well at night with the Fiend about.”

“They are quite well, thank you.”

“I see why you like animals; they don’t contradict you.”

The dance came to an end just then, and the dancers applauded the musicians. Hal offered Lily his arm to escort her back to where she had been. As they walked she tried not to think of what his bare arm would be like.

She couldn’t afford to spend any more time with him. She felt warm, and not just from the exertion of dancing, and she needed to get away from him before she did something foolish.

He’s just a man like any other
, she repeated to herself. If only she could find a way to make him seem less enchanting, more human, dull even.

“If you will excuse me?” She started to lift her hand from his arm, but he pressed his own on top of hers, holding her there.