His Mistress by Morning (24 page)

“Lady Hermione! And Lady Viola! How delightful to find you here!” She glanced around. “And unescorted.”

That censorious bit prodded Sebastian into action. “Yes, what are you two doing out here alone?”

Charlotte noticed that he kept his gaze fixed on his sisters and didn’t spare her a moment’s glance.

Hermione straightened. “Griffin is just over that way a bit, with Sir Joshua and Miss Kendell. He promised quite faithfully to return forthwith, so there is nothing amiss, Sebastian. Besides, we have Charlotte with us as well.”

“Miss Wilmont,” he said, bowing slightly to her.

“Lord Trent, how nice to see you…again.” She let the word purr off her tongue like Lottie might, full of innuendo that she had no right to claim.

“Again?” Hermione and Miss Burke asked at the same time, the former with surprise and the latter with feminine suspicion.

“I bumped into Miss Wilmont as I was leaving the house,” he explained.

“Yes, and I have the bruises to prove it,” she teased back.

Miss Burke’s pert, pink lips worked into a firm line as she eyed Charlotte. But once she’d taken in the outmoded bonnet, the plain gown, and the lack of anything fashionable, she dismissed her without a moment’s hesitation, turning slightly from Charlotte and saying to Hermione and Viola, “I was just telling your dear brother that I haven’t spent enough time with the two of you, and how I wished we had gone to school together, Lady Hermione, so I would have the advantage of those kindred years.”

Viola made a gagging noise, which she quickly turned
into a cough when Sebastian shot a dark glance in her wayward direction.

Miss Burke didn’t wait for any response, because perhaps she hadn’t expected one, for she was now intent on striking the perfect pose for the benefit of her patroness, Lady Routledge.

And of course, the venerable matron spied her nearly immediately, for hadn’t she been the one to declare Lavinia Burke the Season’s first and foremost Original and urge (more to the point, bully) the other hostesses and society denizens follow suit?

“Yes, Rockhurst, you were right, it is Miss Burke,” the lady was saying as she strolled forward with her nephew on her arm.

To Charlotte’s dismay, Rowan trotted along at the earl’s side. The dog stopped immediately when he spotted her, then he let out a low, menacing growl.

“Rowan!” Rockhurst snapped at the beast, tugging at a leash that barely restrained the enormous creature. “Where are your manners? Sit!”

The dog did as he was ordered, but his uneasy eyes never left Charlotte.

“That animal is a menace, Rockhurst!” Lady Routledge declared. She heaved a great sigh and turned toward the assembled company. “Well, who have we here?”

“As always it is a great honor to see you, my lady,” Miss Burke was saying in that false gay voice of hers. “Such a fine party we make now.”

The old dowager eyed the Marlowes like a terrier looking for something to chew. “Ah, Trent, there you are. And your sisters as well. I just received your mother’s note this morning, along with her submission for my program.
A scene from
A Midsummer’s Night Dream,
I see. Should be quite the dramatic moment of the evening.”

The Dewmont twins snickered, for everyone knew that Lady Walbrook’s renditions of the Bard were infamous for going horribly awry. Lavinia simply put her gloved hand over her mouth to cover a malicious smile.

Hermione blushed to her roots, and Charlotte did her best to quell a growing sense of indignation for her friend.

“Will Lady Cordelia be taking part?” Miss Burke inquired once she’d recovered.

“No,” Hermione said in clipped tones. “She’s in Bath for the rest of the Season.”

“More of her Roman studies with your aunt, Lady Davy. They are the eccentric pair, I would guess.”

Charlotte’s gaze flew to Sebastian. Why wasn’t he doing anything? Like putting a muzzle on this smug little chit instead of allowing her to continue to degrade his family?

But from what she could see, he appeared lost in thought, as if he hadn’t heard a thing. Well, the devil take him. If he wasn’t going to do anything, then she would.

“What are you doing, Miss Burke?” Charlotte asked. “For the soirée, that is.”

Silence stopped the party cold as everyone looked in her direction, for she knew no one had given much consideration to her participation until this moment.

Miss Burke looked down her pert nose at Charlotte. “I am reciting an ode on the sanctity of marriage, which I composed myself.” The girl preened a bit. “I fear I have a bit of bluestocking in me.”

“Never, Lavinia!” one of the Dewmont sisters enthused, the other one joining in like a witless robin. “Not you!”

Miss Burke demurred, as expected, then to Charlotte’s horror turned back toward Hermione and looked about to pounce again.

So Charlotte waded back into the fray with every bit of Lottie’s sharp tongue. “That sounds rather dull to me, if I do say so. I mean, truly, Miss Burke, what do you know of marriage, let alone men?”

S
ebastian had, since the first moment he’d approached his sisters, found himself watching Lottie.

Demmit, Miss Wilmont.

Whatever was the matter with him today that he couldn’t remember her deuced name?

More to the point, what had happened to his sister’s mousy spinster of a friend?

She didn’t look any different, with her dull gown and plain bonnet, but there was something altogether changed about her.

Beside him, Miss Burke drew in a deep breath. “Well, I suppose I know quite a bit about men, Miss…Miss—”

“Wilmont,” Sebastian supplied. Much to his chagrin, he realized he’d been woolgathering and had missed whatever Hermione’s friend had said that now had Lavinia at points.

“Miss Wilmont,” his soon-to-be betrothed was saying, baring her teeth behind a gracious smile. “Perhaps when you’ve engaged the affections of a man”—her hand came
up and twined around his forearm—“you’ll be able to provide us your opinions on the subject.”

Sebastian glanced down at the feminine glove atop his sleeve and wondered when her touch had started to feel like leg irons.

“I’d say she’s engaged mine,” the Earl of Rockhurst interjected, shooting Miss Wilmont a wicked smile that brought a pretty pink blush to the lady’s fair cheeks.

Sebastian’s gut tightened immediately. What the devil was the earl about? First and foremost, he’d never liked Rockhurst—his reputation alone put the man beyond the pale, but to see him casting his roaming gaze in Miss Wilmont’s direction, well, it was enough to make any decent man concerned.

Yes, that was it. He was just concerned for the lady’s reputation…her virtue…

Once again visions of a Miss Wilmont unclad and lying beneath him danced before his eyes.

Sebastian shuttered his eyes and began to rub his temple. Perhaps he needed to see a surgeon…or, at the very least, an oculist.

“Oh, do be quiet, Rockhurst,” Lady Routledge was saying, sounding more than a bit peeved over seeing her social choice for the Season being bested. “I don’t believe you were asked.”

The earl looked about to argue the point, but his aunt stifled him with a hearty “thwack” of her fan into his chest.

The rakish devil had the audacity to wink at Miss Wilmont before he stepped back and out of his aunt’s reach.

“Then I must ask, Miss Wilmont,” Lavinia said, “what are you performing for Lady Routledge’s soirée?” The
girl paused as she shot a triumphant smile toward her friends.

Sebastian could never remember which Dewmont sister was which, only that their chatter nearly drove him mad. And more to the point, he’d never imagined either of them in their shifts…let alone their altogether. So why did this Miss Wilmont have him in this perplexing State?

“I wasn’t invited,” Miss Wilmont replied without any shame.

“Oh, how embarrassing,” Lavinia said demurely. “I didn’t know.”

“Not invited?” Lady Routledge exclaimed. “You’re Sir Nestor’s daughter, are you not?”

Miss Wilmont nodded.

“An oversight, my dear,” the old matron said with an air of insincerity that sent her nephew into a coughing fit. “Of course you must come! But do say, what is your talent? A concerto on the pianoforte perhaps? Singing, I’d guess. I remember your mother’s cousin, Finella Uppington-Higgins, now she had a memorable voice.”

“None of those, I fear,” Charlotte replied.

“No talent!” Lady Routledge bristled. “Impossible. Every true lady of the
ton
possesses a talent. It is the mark of breeding, of education…why, of respectability.”

Miss Burke opened her mouth to add her opinion on the matter, but Miss Wilmont spoke up quickly, cutting the younger girl off. “I think, my lady, that sometimes it is better for one to know their limitations than subject a hapless audience to those shortcomings.”

“Harrumph! Every young lady should have some trait that endears her to good company.”

“Then I suppose with my limitations, I would have to
provide the entertainment,” she countered. “Find someone of exceptional skill to make up for my lack in singing, or playing, or elocution.”

“And you think you can recognize true talent, Miss Wilmont?” Lady Routledge said, her eyes narrowing. “Without the benefits of schooling and lessons and the time in Society that has obviously not been given you?”

“Yes,” Miss Wilmont replied. “It is the duty of every hostess to see her guests well entertained. And I would think that is the finest talent of all.”

“Harrumph!” Lady Routledge drove her cane into the ground and looked completely vexed at being bested by this slip of a spinster.

Meanwhile, their rapid-fire repartee had left the rest of the company standing on the sidelines—mute and a bit shell-shocked.

“I think she has you there, Aunt,” the earl interjected, only adding to the lady’s irritation. “I daresay that after all the screeching last year, you’d welcome a decent bit of music or oration.”

Lady Routledge shot her nephew a look that suggested she wished him in Surrey, if not further, say like the darkest reaches of India. “Then Miss Wilmont, I ask you to come to my soirée and prove your point. If you have no talent, as you profess, then provide someone to stand in your stead.”

“But my lady,” Miss Burke protested, “the point of the evening is to show the talents of well-bred ladies.” Her hot glance in Miss Wilmont’s direction suggested she found the other girl most likely lacking both in talent and breeding.

“Yes, it is,” Lady Routledge declared. “But I think
such presumption demands examination. Therefore, Miss Wilmont, prove your superiority over the rest of the ladies this Season and provide a talent for the evening that surpasses anything seen before in our elevated circle.”

A stunned silence surrounded the party. For what was there to say to such a challenge? It was patently unfair and only proffered to embarrass Miss Wilmont.

Sebastian didn’t like it, not one bit, and neither did Rockhurst, it seemed, given the dark scowl on the other man’s face. But this time, Sebastian wasn’t about to let him rise to Miss Wilmont’s defense. The man had no connection to the lady and therefore no right to it.

He ignored the fact that he had little claim either, other than a tenuous one through his sister. “Lady Routledge, I think you are demanding too much of Miss Wilmont. How is she to engage someone to your exacting standards in such a short time period?”

Lavinia’s fingers tightened over his sleeve, and he felt much like the earl’s wolfhound, being tugged back on a short leash.

A notion that set as well with him as it did with Rowan.

But it was all worth it when Miss Wilmont turned a smile in his direction. “My lord, you needn’t worry for my sake. I am quite certain I can produce a substitute that will awe and astound Lady Routledge’s guests.”

Her utter confidence set him aback. How could this be? As far as he knew, Miss Wilmont never went out, and now she was challenging one of London’s most exacting hostesses? She was either mad or, as his old Irish nanny would have held, a changeling.

“Lord Trent? Lord Trent!” Lavinia was saying. She tugged at his arm. “My lord, are you listening to me?”

Sebastian sighed and looked down at the girl. “Yes, Miss Burke?”

Lavinia tossed her head slightly. “I would like to return home. Now. I am starting to feel the sun.”

He shook his head. “We’ll have to see my sisters home first, and Miss Wilmont as well, since my miscreant brother has now disappeared.” He nodded toward the empty space where Griffin and the Kendells had been standing.

“That will never do,” she complained.

“Then come along with me, Miss Burke,” Lady Routledge declared. “You and your friends can accompany me in Rockhurst’s barouche.” She turned to her nephew. “I suppose you and that beast of yours can fend for yourselves.”

“We always do,” the earl replied, making an elegant bow toward his aunt.

“Harrumph! Much to my never-ending despair, I’d add.” She turned, cane in hand, nose in the air. “Miss Burke, you and your friends will attend me. I want to hear more on this ode to marriage.”

No one dared gainsay Lady Routledge when she made up her mind, and Miss Burke, ever the conscientious (and grateful) debutante, smiled. “It would be our honor, my lady,” she said, though the hot glance she shot at Sebastian was a portent of an argument to come.

Oh, he’d made quite a muddle of things today. First, he’d missed the Venetian breakfast, then he’d failed to notice her new hat when he’d arrived to apologize. In his defense, she always had a new hat, so what was there to notice?

It would most likely take the rest of his mother’s orange
blossoms and a promise to escort her and the Dewmont sisters shopping every day for a week to get him back into her good graces.

And like Rowan on his leash, Sebastian was starting to chafe under his nearly-intended’s demands. He’d only won her hand thus far because her father wanted to see their adjoining properties joined and, further, have the baron’s newly gained title (which would pass to Lavinia’s firstborn son) united with an ancient one such as the earldom of Walbrook.

Oh, there might have been other, more illustrious, suitors for Lavinia’s hand, but Lord Burke had settled on Sebastian for one other important reason: The Marlowe debts that the baron would settle upon their marriage would give him an upper hand for the rest of his life over his more noble son-in-law.

And it seemed his daughter understood that arrangement as well.

As Rockhurst’s carriage rolled away, Sebastian turned his annoyance on his sisters. And Miss Wilmont.

“We are going home,” he announced. “Rockhurst,” he said, nodding curtly toward the earl, hoping the fellow would take a hint and leave.

“I fear I can’t go with you,” Miss Wilmont declared. “I have an errand to complete.” She glanced over his shoulder at the park beyond. “I had hoped your brother could be of assistance. If you don’t mind, I’ll wait here for him to return.”

Wait? Alone? Or worse, with Rockhurst and his Shetland-pony-sized dog attracting more attention than a gypsy caravan?

And there was one other part of her refusal that stung
his pride: What was wrong with
him
that she couldn’t ask for his assistance?

Sebastian straightened and did his best to ignore his trampled pride. “Perhaps I can be of assistance.” If anything to speed along this scene and get them all out of the park and away from all the speculative glances being sent in their direction.

“If you could, that would be most kind,” she said, glancing up at him from beneath that horrid bonnet of hers and letting the sparkle in her clear blue eyes undo his heart.

Gads, when had spinsters started flirting like Cyprians?

Miss Wilmont shot him one more sly, deliberate smile before she opened her reticule and fished around inside it a bit, then pulled from her bag the most astounding sight.

A diamond necklace of remarkable worth.

“Oh my!” Hermione gasped. “Oh, my Charlotte! They are incredible.”

There was no doubt the gems were real given the way they sparkled even in the meager sunshine. But instead of being dazzled by their brilliance, as it appeared the others were, Sebastian took a step back.

For all of a sudden he was assailed with a feeling of hot, angry jealousy that had no explanation. No reason. Like everything else about this oddly disconcerting day, seeing Miss Wilmont with those diamonds had him up in arms.

“Good God!” Rockhurst exclaimed. “Wherever did you get that?”

“Her aunt,” Hermione informed them. “Charlotte received them as part of her inheritance.” She turned a smug
smile toward Sebastian. “So as I told you yesterday, Charlotte is now someone of consequence.”

“I don’t think—” she started to say.

“You cannot sell those,” he blurted out, even when the last thing he wanted to see was their tempting beauty entwined around her neck.

The lady paused, one regal brow rising slightly. “Whyever not?”

Ruffled at being crossed, Sebastian rose to her bait. “Well, it is improper for a lady to sell her jewels. Highly irregular.” She’d asked for his advice and he had given it. He crossed his arms over his chest and considered the matter closed.

He should have known better by now.

The lady tucked them back in her purse. “They are mine and mine to sell, Lord Trent. And if you won’t help me, then I will—”

“Have you consulted your mother on this matter?” he interjected. From the quick, stubborn set of her jaw, he had his answer. “At the very least, your family solicitor should be the one to—”

“Lord Trent,” she shot back. “Do you consult your mother on every one of your business transactions?”

Viola let out a low whistle and stepped back. Her mione followed suit and looked to be bracing herself for the impending explosion.

He ignored them both, as well as a grinning Rockhurst. The earl held his ground with a jaunty pose and a look of admiration for Miss Wilmont that was starting to border on worship.

“Consult my mother? Utter madness, madame.”

The lady smiled at him. “My point, sir, is that I am six
and twenty and know my mind on the subject. I think it is ridiculous that just because I am gently bred, I am not credited with having the capacity to manage my own affairs. Do you think me feeble-minded?”

At the moment, he was quite sure the lady didn’t want his opinion of her.

Rockhurst nudged him with his walking stick. “She bested my aunt and your Miss Burke, so I’d suggest taking cover before she decides to run for Parliament and makes a mockery of all we hold dear.”

Sebastian wasn’t about to back down. This presumptuous chit was taking delight in provoking him, and he wasn’t going to tolerate it. “Miss Wilmont, do you have any idea how much those are worth?”

“Fifteen hundred pounds,” she declared, pulling her reticule strings tight and looking up at him as if it were perfectly normal for a twenty-six-year-old spinster to be running about Hyde Park with a queen’s ransom in jewels.

Sebastian nearly choked. “Do I dare ask, whatever do you need with such a sum?”

She shot him a level glance. “First, I want to buy a dress.”