Kathryn Caskie - [Royle Sisters 02] (2 page)

“If you can imagine it, it seems she is convinced you have enough sway to nudge me into my family’s seat in the House of Lords.”

Apsley laughed. “How you do go on.”

“No, no, there is
more
.” He raised a hand before the other man could interrupt again. “She even believes you possess the influence to urge me into marriage before the end of the season. Now, agreeing to abandon my profligate ways is one matter—but the parson’s mousetrap? Ha! After what happened with Constance, I will never consider such lunacy again.”

“Marriage, you say?”

Laird forced a laugh. “Isn’t that diverting? As if anyone could ever convince me to become leg-shackled willingly again.” He raised his eyebrows and waited for Apsley to do the same.

But he didn’t.

Instead Apsley stared back at Laird as though he…as though he…
no
, surely he did not agree with her!

But Apsley was actually smiling.

Bloody hell, it seemed that he did agree.

“And you mock your mother’s well-placed faith in me, sir? I assure you, I can be quite persuasive when I am passionate about something.”

“That is true enough, except I happen to know you aren’t invested in this cause, Apsley. Not in the least.”

“Care to wager on it?” Apsley lifted his left eyebrow.

“Do yourself a good deed, save your guineas and a trip to White’s to mark the book. For this would be one wager I would certainly win.”

“Really?” Both of Apsley’s eyebrows lifted this time.” Are you so sure?” He folded his arms across his chest.

“Haven’t a single doubt. For, sir, while I
know you enjoy nothing so much as a challenge with such long odds, think about what your winning would mean. Were I to marry, my shares of respectability would no doubt increase, but my days of freedom would be at an end. I ask you, who else could match your stamina in carousing, gaming, or raising a glass to Bacchus?”

“Carousing, eh?” Apsley scratched his temple in feigned contemplation. “I thought you had vowed to become respectable after your failure with Lady Henceforth.”

“Allow me to rephrase. Carousing in more intimate circles. In society, I will remain the mannered gentleman and redeem myself for the sake of the MacLaren name.”

“So that is what you were doing just now in the garden with the baroness—redeeming yourself?” Apsley raised his eyebrows. “She’s married you know.”

“Yes, but I’ve heard he’s a poor shot.” Laird grinned at his own coarse joke. He’d had an unfortunate start in London this time, that’s all. Tomorrow he would do better. And in time he would finally prove himself worthy of his title and of the good widow Lady Henceforth.
He smoothed down his lapels, straightened his back, and fashioned a confident smile.

The click of heels on the marble floor drew the curtain on any further comment on the subject.

“Here comes your mother again.”

Laird sighed resignedly. “I apologize, Apsley. I fear there is no escape for you.”

Apsley fashioned a shudder as Laird’s damning words reached his ears, but hoisted a smile onto his lips and turned in the direction of the drawing room. “Lady MacLaren, how are you this evening?” He glanced momentarily back at Laird. “You owe me one, you do realize this?” he whispered.

“I do, and I truly appreciate your sacrifice.” Then, with a chuckle, he nudged Apsley mercilessly forward and into the countess’s clutches.

Laird drew in a deep breath and fired it through his teeth as he leaned against the wall nearest the door. The drawing room was more populated with guests than it had been only an hour before.

Ladies garbed in flowing silken gowns stood uncomfortably elbow-to-elbow with dark-coated gentlemen. Naught but narrow rivulets of unoccupied space ran between the clusters of
conversation, and those existed only to allow the footmen to continue their libation service.

He peered through the open door at the clock in the passage and huffed a sigh. Damn it all, not yet half-past eleven; it was early by society’s standards. Still, he would have left the infernal rout long ago were it not being held in his own bloody town house.

He should not have allowed his mother, who was just fully out from mourning both his father and his brother, to arrange such a grand event here in Cockspur Street.

Clearly he had gone mad.

Why had he not convinced her to wait until autumn, then toss a country house party at MacLaren Hall? But he knew this was an idle wish, for she was the Countess MacLaren, and had earned a reputation for doing nothing by half.

Her rout, marking the MacLaren return to society, had been the talk of the
ton
for more than eight weeks. Why, the London newspapers had dedicated nearly as much column space to the impending fête as they had to the goings-on at Parliament. Sadly, it seemed that he alone had dreaded this much-touted event.

Laird thumped the back of his head against a
wall in frustration. He had naught in common with these society boors. Nothing at all.

He wanted to be at Covent Garden or backstage at the opera with all the pretty dancers. Not here, hobnobbing it up with the Quality’s white skirts and their starched elders.

But he was the new earl, and he owed it to his family to uphold the honor of the title.

He knew, too, that it was his mother’s greatest hope that this night her only surviving son would meet a woman and escort her down the aisle of St. George’s by season’s end. And so, for her sake, he tried to be charming, to push aside his sadness.

Still, the only women who interested him in the least were two who eagerly offered to join him in the garden and tamp down his pain as effectively as a glass of fine brandy.

But nothing ever lasted long enough this night. Not the spirits, not the carnal pleasures. His emptiness, feelings of loss, of guilt, soon returned redoubled.

With a sigh, Laird scanned the room for a pretty someone to elevate his disposition during this endless affair, when his gaze lit on a tray-bearing footman who was busily dispensing claret to the guests.

Ah, there was his salvation.

He was about to push off from his propped position against the wall when suddenly a pale female seemed to emerge from the plaster not a shoulder’s width from him. An odd shiver seemed to tease every bit of his skin at once.

She was a startling vision, swathed completely in white, and he could not manage to remove his gaze from her as she drifted into the center of the drawing room, seemingly unseen by anyone other than himself.

Gorblimey
. Could it be that he was imagining this?

He shook his head, wanting to be sure she was actually there, then widened his eyes and focused his gaze entirely on her.

The woman’s hair was as pale as sunlight on a winter’s morn, and her skin as snowy and smooth as fine porcelain—an angel incarnate.

Or at least this was his first impression of her, though Laird was willing enough to mark this one down to having indulged himself too generously. Admittedly he was defeated by the heavy, numbing effect of the spirits on both his mind and body.

He should have turned for his bedchamber at
that moment, but instead, he took a wobbly step toward her, then another.

And then he witnessed a most astonishing sight.

The angel walked up to a trio of gentleman in the midst of a lively discussion, and without one of them noticing her or what she was doing, she eased a glass of claret from the shortest man’s hand, then turned and settled it upon a passing footman’s tray.

Damned odd thing for her—or anyone—to do.

And yet, to his astonishment, she repeated the sequence again. This time she lifted a glass from a giggling debutante, too absorbed in her own conversation to notice the crystal’s removal from her hand.

What the hell was she about? Didn’t make a damned bit of sense.

Just then a footman passed by Laird, pausing only long enough to allow him to lift a filled goblet from the silver salver.

A diverting thought swept into his mind, setting a mischievous grin on his mouth.

Hurriedly he followed the angel as she slowly moved through the crowded drawing room. He
watched intently as she looked this way and that for her next victim.

Good, good, she was coming his way now. He would play her game.
Just a little closer. That’s right
.

He slipped into the fringe of a lively conversation, and then hoping his apparent inattention would mark him as her prey, began to laugh uproariously as though some great joke had just been told.

He knew the exact moment her attention fixed on him. A thrill shot through his body as she neared, and he felt the pull of warm air as she circled the group, calculating her moment.

His heart pounded hard inside his chest, but he didn’t dare look up. Instead he watched her from the periphery of his vision.

Closer and closer she came.

Then it happened.

Her slender gloved fingers pinched the thin lip of his goblet and began to lift.

His free hand shot through the air between them, and before she could register what was happening, he seized her wrist and held firm.

She gasped in surprise and swung her head around and up to look at him.

Laird’s breath left his lungs in a whoosh the moment their gazes locked. His left eyebrow shot toward his hairline.

Damn me
.

Though her hair, skin, and even her gown were nearly colorless, her lips and her cheeks were the same hue as cherry blossoms in the spring.

But it was her eyes that held him fast. Twin bursts of radiant gold, rimmed with the green of summer, blazed up at him.

Neither he nor she moved or said a word for a minute, or perhaps for a blink. He didn’t quite know. Time seemed to cease to exist in that small space they occupied.

Until, all of a sudden, she slyly arched a single golden eyebrow, almost as though she were mimicking him. In a quick movement, she twisted her wrist from him, then turned and ducked into a gaggle of strolling matrons.

In that instant, she was gone.

The corners of Laird’s parched lips lifted as he stared into the direction she had disappeared.

Absently he raised his hand to sip from his goblet. But he realized too late that it wasn’t there.

The golden-eyed minx had managed to take it after all.

He laughed into his fist, until he realized his grave error.

Bloody hell
. She had a fire within her, that one. Might even have been the only woman tonight in whom he held any interest…and he hadn’t even thought to ask her name.

It was nearly two in the morn, and yet the rout showed no sign of drawing to a close.

But it really didn’t matter, Anne decided. Within an hour, she would be home in bed…or in shackles. Her temples throbbed madly at the thought.

“Anne, Lilywhite has given the signal.” Elizabeth turned from her sentrylike position beside the cold hearth and looked straight at Anne. “The passage is completely clear.
Go
. Go now.”

Threadlike wisps of hair rose up at the back of her slender neck. “This is insanity, Elizabeth. I cannot do it, I simply cannot.”

“Yes, you can. You know you must. There’s no other way. This is our only chance.”

“But there are still at least three score guests in the house. What if I am seen? What if I am caught—again?”

“Oh Anne, stop fretting. That gentleman was of no consequence whatsoever. Lud, you were
playing a game, and who among us hasn’t ever done so at a rout?”

“It was
not
a game, Elizabeth. I was flexing my skills, gathering my courage. But then he
saw me
when no one did. Don’t you understand? I am not ready to do this.
He saw me
.” Anne glanced worriedly down the passage in the direction of the staircase.

“What does it matter if he noticed you? He was completely sotted. It is not as though he will remember you.” Elizabeth snatched up Anne’s wrist. “Besides, the Old Rakes are at the ready in the event anything goes awry. Look yonder.” She tipped her head to an elderly, apple-shaped gentleman standing just inside the drawing room doors scratching his ample belly. “Do you see? Lilywhite is just there.”

“Is the earl in the drawing room?” Anne swept the room with her gaze. “Because if he isn’t, he might have retired to his bed for the evening. Has anyone considered that?”

“How, pray, would I know? He has not been in society for more than a year, so I cannot identify him, either. But Lilywhite has been positioned at the stairs for almost an hour. No one has passed him.”

“I cannot go, Elizabeth.” Anne’s entire body began to quake.

“Yes, you can.” She nudged Anne forward a step. “No one else can do this, sister. You know that.”

Anne stared mutely at Elizabeth.

She
did
know it.

Their sister, Mary, plump and in her sixth month of pregnancy, was off happily rusticating in the country with her adoring husband.

And as insane as this idea was, Anne knew copper-haired Elizabeth couldn’t take three steps through this crowd without earning the admiration of a gentleman or two.

Such was not the reality for Anne. Until this very moment, it had always pricked at her that no one ever assigned her any consequence or bothered to know her name.

But why should anyone pay her heed? She was simply Anne, the middle Royle sister. The one who minded her manners. The one who followed the rules and never purposely did anything that might bring undue notice to herself or her family.

Well…at least until tonight.

Anne cast a nervous glance through the open
drawing room doors at Lilywhite. He flashed his eyes at her and raised his chin, indicating her path.

“
Go
, Anne.”

She nodded and, with a nervous gulp, started forward.

Until now, more than anything, she had wanted to be noticed, to be seen. To be appreciated.

But on this particular evening, as she snaked her way through an elegant drawing room filled with the frothy cream of London society, Anne purposely did not raise her golden eyes or make any attempt to prompt an introduction to anyone.