Lady Beware (4 page)

T
hea blended with the guests, smiling and hoping no trace of her inner mayhem showed. But she was alert for signs of drama or disaster. There
was
something, something discordant in the air.

What had that man done?

People only smiled and nodded at her, or paid compliments on the ball. If he'd announced the ridiculous betrothal, someone would have to say something. Wouldn't they?

Had it been a trick? Had he terrified her for amusement? Was he now laughing about it with others?

Was he not even a Cave at all?

Hope flared, but shame quenched it. If it had all been a game, Dare would remain burdened.

She couldn't bear not knowing. She wove through the guests, her smile feeling like a grimace, seeking Dare or Darien—what a silly confusion that was!—or anyone else who could tell her what had happened while she'd been away.

“Such a tragedy!”

Thea started and looked at the speaker, Lady Swin-namer. “What's happened?”

“Your poor gown, Lady Thea! Quite, quite ruined, I'm sure.”

Thea almost said, “Oh, that,” in a manner that would have been bound to raise suspicions, and gaunt Lady Swinnamer was spiteful enough without fuel.

“Not quite ruined, I hope, but a great annoyance. Please excuse me, I must find my brother.”

“Lord Darius?” Lady Swinnamer cooed. “Not more trouble, I hope.”

Thea blasted a smile at her. “Quite the contrary,” she said and walked away, hoping the woman choked on it. Then she halted.

Had someone just said, “Cave?” in a shocked voice, a voice rising on the second syllable? A look around found only bland smiles. She was going mad! She had to find someone she could trust to speak plainly.

She continued on toward the ballroom, sure now of tension in the air. She looked to one side and a woman's eyes slid away, perhaps with a smirk. She challenged a staring Lord Shepstone and the young man blushed. She kept walking, because to stop still in the corridor would give the onlookers even more to talk about, but she wanted to disappear down a hole in the floor. She had never in her life felt so uncomfortable in society.

She searched the dancers, seeing none of her family. She hurried on to check through the line of anterooms, each scattered with people. They smiled, but did some look at her oddly? She saw no one she trusted with this.

Then she spotted her cousin Maddy, typically enthralling three uniformed officers. Blond, buxom Maddy always enthralled, and she had a weakness for a uniform. But she also always knew everything that was going on.

Thea joined the group casually, but after a few minutes of chat she said, “Gentlemen, I'm going to break your hearts by stealing Maddy for a little while. Off you go, sirs!”

They took their congé with good grace, but Maddy wasn't fooled. “What's the matter?” she asked as soon as they were alone.

“I wanted to ask you the same thing. Did anything happen while I was away?”

“Away?” But then Maddy looked at her. “Why have you changed your gown?”

“Uffham spilled beetroot on me. Do you know where Dare is?”

“No. He was dancing not long ago. What on earth is the matter?”

Thea didn't know what to say. Clearly Maddy knew nothing shocking, and she wasn't ready to speak of private adventures.

“Uffham,” she said vaguely. “The gown. I thought some people looked at me strangely.”

“Not surprising with your stays peeping out.”

Thea glanced down and raised a hand to cover the disaster. So that had been it! She turned her back to the room and twitched the dress up again. “I should go and change.”

“Nonsense. It's wickedly fetching.”

“I don't want to be wickedly fetching!”

“Every woman wants to be wickedly fetching, and that gown should fetch. I wouldn't have thought red would suit you so well. Madame Louise?”

“Mrs. Fortescue.”

“I must visit her, though I don't have the figure for that clinging style. Alas, I must make do with bountiful.”

“Which you do all too well.”

It was meant as a warning, but Maddy grinned. “I do, don't I? But you can't complain. Men positively swarm you.”

“High rank and a large dowry ensure it.”

“I have both, but prefer to put my appeal to men down to my charms. Oh, Thea, don't give me another Great Untouchable look!”

“Don't call me that.”

“Then don't act that way.”

Maddy and Thea were like sisters. Maddy's father was an admiral and often at sea, so she, her brother, and her mother had spent a lot of time at Long Chart, the Duke of Yeovil's Somerset estate. As with any sisters, sometimes there was discord. In this case it rose mainly from Maddy's increasingly bold behavior with her coterie of officers and Thea's attempts to restrain her.

“Did you hear that a Cave's here?” Maddy asked.

Praying her high color was taken for alarm, Thea gasped, “No! Truly?”

Maddy's eyes sparkled. “Deliciously alarming, isn't it? The new Vile Viscount. Mother's certain we'll all be murdered or worse. But I ask you, is being raped worse than being murdered?”

“Maddy!” Thea protested, looking around to be sure no one was in earshot. “What does he look like?”

“I haven't met him yet, but I've been on the hunt.”

“How can you hunt someone if you don't know what he looks like?”

“Darkly demonic. That was Alesia's description. He was pointed out to her and now she's in a quake. Marchampton knows him,” she said, referring to one of the officers she'd been with. “Dark hair and eyes, he said. Foreign-looking because of an Italian mother. There won't be many like that here, especially with horns, tail, and an odor of brimstone.”

“Maddy…”

Her cousin laughed. “Well, Alesia was so ridiculous. Cully adores him.”

“What?”

Cully was Lieutenant Claudius Debenham, Maddy's brother.

“Desperate case of hero worship. Terrifyingly terrific and at times insane, he says.”

“That's adoring praise?” But it seemed frighteningly accurate to Thea and wrecked any hope of the hellish encounter being a joke.

“They even call him Mad Dog,” Maddy said with relish.

“Good God….”

“He was wreaking his madness on the
French
, Thea! When did you become so chickenhearted?”

Thea pulled herself together. “Everything's been a bit fraught this evening.” Now there was an understatement. “I must go and find Dare.”

“He has enough caretakers,” Maddy said.

Thea colored. If she'd niggled at Maddy over her behavior with officers, Maddy had niggled at her protective hovering over Dare. Thea knew that during her brother's recovery she'd become obsessive, she and her mother both.

“I have reasons for needing to speak to him now,” she said.

Maddy's eyes sharpened. “You have secrets. Tell!”

Thea said exactly the wrong thing. “No.”

Maddy grabbed her arm. “You do! What's going on?”

“I can't tell you. Not now, at least. It's nothing really, but I have to find Dare. Just to make sure everything's all right.”

“Very well, but I'm coming with you.” Maddy linked arms with Thea. “And keep a weather eye out for dark and demonic. I need to meet the dread Darien.”

The thought of Maddy involved with her attacker was terrifying.

They had only reached the door of the room when their way was blocked by a strapping blond officer in scarlet and gold.

“Did you hear?” Cully demanded gleefully, in a voice loud enough for a parade ground. “Dare's cleared! Canem Cave says he saw him fall. No question about it.”

People around began to chatter.

“How extraordinary!” Maddy exclaimed.

“How wonderful,” Thea said, meaning it, but her heart suddenly threatened to choke her.

“Canem Cave?” Maddy asked. “Do you mean
the
Cave? Viscount Darien?”

“Who else? He says Dare was doing just as he ought,” Cully went on, deliberately making sure everyone heard. “Riding hell for leather with a message when a shot brought down his horse and he disappeared under a wave of hooves. Canem says it's a miracle he survived.”

“Why Canem?” Maddy asked.

“From
cave canem
, I think,” her brother said.

“He's called Dog?” Maddy asked and laughed.

Her brother flushed. “Not in that way. What a stupid creature you are, Maddy.”

“Well, really!”

Thea let squabble and exclamations swirl. She was immensely relieved on Dare's behalf, of course, but what did this mean for her?

“Where is Lord Darien?” she asked, trying for a pleased, composed tone. “I'd like to thank him.”

“Have to wait,” Cully replied. “Said his piece, then left.”

“Left?”

“Rum, really. Arrived late, told his story to Dare and a few others, then disappeared. But you never know what to expect from Canem Cave. The House of Lords is in for a shake if he ever bothers to attend. Come on. Dare and his friends are celebrating over supper.”

Thea went to join the jubilant party at one of the outside supper tables set in the lantern-lit gardens. When she saw Dare's unshadowed happiness, she was truly thankful and, yes, willing to pay the price if she had to. But as she accepted a glass of champagne for a triumphant toast, she buzzed with panic.

Lord Arden made a joke about the Cave name and there being nothing to
beware
of tonight. Someone else mentioned Mad Marcus Cave, the murderous one. Another said, “The Vile Viscount himself.”

She'd promised to link herself to a Cave, to a name that caused shudders, horror, and an expectation of violence. He'd left, but she took no comfort from that. He'd be back, terrifyingly terrific, dark and demonic, to demand his price.

She felt like some character in a folktale—Rapunzel, perhaps?—who made a foolish bargain and then could not escape her promise.

As everyone drank another toast, a breeze rustled through the trees and touched her naked back. It was as if it whispered,
“Beware, lady, beware.”

I
n a lifetime of crowded army living Darien had found that a well-run gaming hell was the ideal place for a man to be left alone with his thoughts, as long as he played and didn't win too much.

He walked briskly toward a hell called Grigg's, careless of light evening shoes not meant for this work. Mayfair seemed a never-ending parade of tall, narrow houses, packed neatly together in terraces. A strange preference with so many stairs for family and servants. Yet each was a place of comfort, a place of refuge, where people slept easily at night, protected from others by brick walls, locked doors, and bars on the ground-floor windows.

He had such a house now, Cave House, which had been in his family for generations. A tall, narrow collection of empty rooms. He had bricks, locks, and bars, but he felt far from safe there.

Empty rooms should provide peace and quiet, but there were other kinds of noise. Though he had no personal memories of the place, and though all trace of dark deeds had been long since scoured, whitewashed, and painted away, the silent house deafened him.

The nighttime noises were the worst, which was another reason to delay his return there. He sometimes woke to grunts, groans, and occasional screams, in a locked house shared only with a few servants. If any house deserved to be haunted, Cave House was it, but the thought of meeting any remnant of his brother, Mad Marcus Cave, made even him quake.

Given a choice, he'd never enter the house again, but he'd made it part of his plan. His living there was supposed to declare to the world that the past was past and that the new Lord Darien had nothing to be ashamed of. He laughed into the dark. His neck still crawled from being stared at and he could remember hearing:
“Mad Dog Cave. What's he doing here?”

He'd wanted to turn and bite whoever had said that.

Even without words, the subtle avoidance of him had been unignorable. It hadn't been meant to be ignored. It had been meant to drive him away.

He'd seen Van in one room, but by that time he'd known better than to drag a friend into the mess. Later, perhaps, as a reward for victory. For now, clearly a Cave was a Cave, no matter his character and reputation, and ranked somewhat lower than a leper.

At the door of the hell he realized one irony. The warmest welcome he'd received tonight had been from Dare Debenham himself.

Immediately came the never-quite-buried memory of Debenham holding a handkerchief to a bloody nose, saying,
“Cave canem.”

He slammed the door on that. It was over a decade ago, dammit, and since then he'd carved reputation and victory out of a hostile world. And now he'd do the same with the ton.

After all, the Duchess of Yeovil had thanked him tearfully. He had Debenham's sister in his grasp—the lovely, haughty Lady Theodosia. Her name meant “God's gift.” God's gift to him.

He knocked on the door of the hell and was let in. Grigg's was the sort of ill-lit place inhabited by men and women whose whole attention was fixed on cards, dice, and the EO table. No music here, or fancy refreshments. Being a Cave didn't matter. Nothing did as long as a visitor had money to lose. Darien had made sure to lose at least as often as he won. He considered it a form of rent for usage of the space.

He sought a simple game and sat at a macao table, where he could play the odds with half his mind as he reviewed his night.

Why hadn't he expected the ton's reaction? Why had he expected them to see Canem Cave, military hero, instead of just another Cave, as vile as all the rest? He remembered the appalled look on Lady Theodosia Debenham's face when he'd told her who he was. The way she'd insisted that he couldn't be honorable….

Why hadn't he expected to have inherited the whole mess along with the viscountcy? His raking, duelist grandfather, who'd been called Devil Cave in an age when it took a lot to summon images of Satan. His brutal father, labeled the Vile Viscount as credit for a lifetime of gross misbehavior. His uncle, “Dicker” Cave, ravisher of any vulnerable girl to cross his path.

He had expected to wear the albatross of the ultimate blot on the family's dirty escutcheon—Mad Marcus Cave, lunatic murderer of Sweet Mary Wilmott—but not in any personal way. Not in women's fearful eyes and men's protective anger.

God.

No wonder his younger brother, Frank, had been rejected as a suitor.

Frank was a lieutenant in the navy, and he'd fallen in love with his admiral's daughter. Admiral Sir Plunkett Dynnevor had warned him off. Not for being a mere lieutenant, but for being a Cave.

Darien had been outraged and had set out on this campaign to prove respectability. But now he understood. If he'd had a daughter, he'd not allow her to be tied to the Cave name for life.

Yet he'd forced Lady Theodosia into that, he thought as he gathered in some winnings, leaving one guinea counter in play.

The lady wouldn't be a Cave for life, however, and a gilded Debenham would survive a brush with muck with little harm. Perhaps, judging by their battle of wills, she might even gain a frisson of illicit pleasure from it.

He'd met that type before and they'd often proved rewarding….

He pulled his mind back to cool analysis.

What would she do? That was the only important point. Would he win the gamble he'd taken tonight, acting on impulse as he so rarely did?

She might be even now complaining of his behavior. No matter how grateful the Debenham family was for his testimony, they'd not embrace a man who had assaulted their daughter. Instead of allies, they would become enemies.

It could even lead to a duel, and the obvious champion was her brother.

Dare Debenham had been changed by his experiences, but if he'd been shattered, he'd mended into a stronger person. The facile glitter had burned away to reveal true steel.

Not a man Darien would choose as an enemy, and definitely not one he wanted to face in a duel, if only because he was damn tired of death. In any case, this was not a matter that required death.

And all because he'd been swept off course and out of sense by a clear-eyed, arrogant, courageous, and fiercely passionate young woman.

“More brandy, sir?”

Darien started and nodded at the servant. The free brandy served here was foul stuff, but he needed something strong and he had the head for it. He knocked back half the glass, welcoming the harsh burn, and glanced at his card. An ace. He drew but was beaten by the dealer's eight. He still had most of his counters in front of him, and played another.

There was a worse possibility.

If Debenham wasn't up to a duel, the next in line would be the lady's cousin, young Cully. In many ways Cully Debenham reminded Darien of his brother, Frank. The same smiling zest for life, unquenched by war, and the same belief in fundamental goodness.

Cully had been someone else Darien had avoided tonight. The lad had an unfortunate case of hero worship.

Darien vowed to flee the country before facing Cully at pistol point.

But this made him realize that he'd better get home to be available if a challenge came, and able to take whatever action was necessary. He rose, only realizing when the dealer urged him to stay that he'd doubled his money.

“The night's young,” Darien replied, tossing a handful back to the man. “I'm on to Violet Vane's.”

No man could protest his intention to go on to a brothel. He just hoped no one would decide to accompany him. None did. Grigg's was for men who preferred cards to women, except for women who'd combine both.

He walked out into the sort of damp chill for which England was famous. In Spain and Portugal he'd often missed aspects of England, but never this. It was May, but the night air crept into the bones and felt as if it would grow mold in the lungs. But then, the worthy people in their tall houses were tucked up in their warm beds at this time of night.

Or still dancing at a ball.

What would Lady Theodosia do if he returned and asked her for a dance?

Faint?

Slap his face, more likely.

That made it even more tempting.

He was actually walking in that direction. He shook his head and turned toward Hanover Square. As he walked, he rattled his silver-knobbed cane along railings. His fate for the moment was beyond his control. It now lay in the hands of a lady. Long, elegant hands concealed by gloves. Long red gloves, which suddenly made him think of an army surgeon's hands and arms, crimson up beyond the elbows.

He shuddered at the image. How could those hands, those gloves, have been so damned erotic?

And the pearls.

White, glowing, virginal contrast to bold red.

Was she virgin or wanton? Her courage had seemed the valiance of the young and untried, but her passionate response had knocked him for a loop. But even then, something taut, something frantic, suggested that she had ignited for the first time tonight.

With him.

Lady Theodosia Debenham. Sister to his enemy. Who must hate him now and would hate him more before this was over.

Fate was a wanton, vicious jade.