Taming Beauty (15 page)

God above, her hair was unbound, whiskey and honey spirals twisting and coiling over the bare slopes of her shoulders, feathering across the swell of her bosom, winding around her arms and curling about her hips. The mass of tawny locks was astounding, luxuriant and abundant, a wondrously wild golden mane.

The woman looked decidedly decadent and dangerous.

And she appeared to be hosting a bacchanal on his terrace.

Waving a fan languidly before her face, she peered up at Jasper, green eyes alight with a brittle sort of amusement. “We were beginning to wonder if you and Dun had decided to settle your differences with a duel.”

“You haven’t killed Papa have you?” Lady Priscilla asked with a giggle.

“Lord Malleville doesn’t seem the sort to kill his bride’s father,” Kate replied with her ever-present smile. “Not before the wedding, at any rate.”

“At any rate,” Harry repeated with a chuckle. “You are too quick, Katie Price.”

“So all the boys in Devonshire say.”

“So long as they don’t say you’re fast,” Lilith quipped. “That’s a moniker that will stay with you long after you think you’ve outrun it.”

“Yes, but fast girls have all the fun,” Amelia said, smiling at Lilith as if they were co-conspirators in some naughty joke.

“If you haven’t run Papa through, where is he?” Lady Priscilla persisted with yet another giggle, proving herself giddy when in her cups. “You don’t suppose he got lost on the moors, do you?”

“Never fear, dear,” Susan said, snuggling against her husband’s chest and tucking her head beneath his chin. “I’m certain Lord Dunaway will turn up sooner or later.”

“Like the proverbial bad penny,” Alabaster said. “Dunaway is never about when you need him, but always showing up when you least expect him.”

“Is there ever a time when that man is truly needed?” Apparently satisfied with her floral arrangement, Hesperia O’Connell left off meddling with Matthew’s curls and bent to press a kiss to his temple.

“Or a bad penny, for that matter?” Kate added.

“I’m not entirely certain I know what a bad penny is,” Amelia said.

“It is a counterfeit penny, made of tin or some such,” Matthew replied.

“Oh, but isn’t that illegal?” Amelia asked.

“A hanging offense when last I checked,” Pritchett confirmed as Jasper stepped over his legs to take the only empty seat at the table, a seat that put him at the foot of the chaise upon which a goddess sprawled amid a tumble of wanton curls and plush pillows. 

“A man can beat his wife with impunity but God forbid he pass a bad penny,” Harry said with a little shake of her head.

Lilith’s eyes gleamed as she lowered her fan, closed it with a flick of her wrist and tapped it against her hip once, twice. “Or pass wind in the presence of the king.”

“Gracious, I haven’t thought of that in years,” Alabaster said around a huff of laughter. “But that’s a tale best left for another day.”

“I don’t see why.” Lilith’s lips curled into a smirk as she turned to meet her grandmother’s eyes across the table riddled with the remnants of their morning revelry. “We’re among friends, after all. Family, if Dun has his way.”

There was a beat of silence as an unspoken message passed between the ladies and Jasper imagined he could hear the snap of stained and sullied linens fluttering on the wind.

“Can a man be hanged for passing wind?” Lady Priscilla interrupted the silence. “Truly?”

“Perhaps not hung, but certainly banished from all good society,” Alabaster replied. “Why, just ask the Duke of Wherewithal.”

“I don’t know as I’ve ever heard of the Duke of Wherewithal,” Rossiter said.

“Precisely my point, child,” Alabaster replied. “Very few people below the age of sixty have heard of dear old Withy, who isn’t actually a duke but rather the natural son of the third Duke of Cheltenham.”

“As in he would have been duke had his mother had the wherewithal to bring His Grace up to scratch?” Harry asked with a laugh.

“Actresses rarely bring dukes up to scratch. Still, Withy was quite the infamous rogue about Town in his heyday.”

“And he was banished for flatulence?” Matthew asked.

“Flatulence not of his own making,” Alabaster replied. “It was his brother, the fourth Duke of Cheltenham who broke wind and pointed a finger at Withy. As you might surmise, fisticuffs ensued and both gentlemen were exiled from court.”

“Is Cheltenham the portly fellow with the bushy sideburns and the giant wart on his nose who rides about Town on a bow-backed white horse?” Harry asked.

“Honestly, Harry, one day your inability to put names to faces will get you into trouble,” Kate answered with the air of one whose patience had been sorely tested. “His Grace is the frail man forever dressed as if he is on his way to pay court to some king from the last century.”

“That fussy little man was exiled from court over broken wind?” Harry asked doubtfully.

“It was but one skirmish in a long line of such petty, childish skirmishes,” Alabaster said. “Reputedly begun when the brothers were still in short pants battling over the scraps of their father’s attention. If they weren’t fighting over some priceless work of art or that derelict piece of property wedged between their townhouses, they were fighting over a lady’s affections. The wind debacle was simply the straw which broke the camel’s back. Or the king’s as the case may be.”

“Were you one of the ladies over whom they fought?” Kate posed what Jasper considered to be an all-too obvious and all-too unnecessary question.

“So the story goes, but my mother’s watchful eye kept me from falling into either of their arms, let alone their beds, before they were banished.” Alabaster’s voice held an edge to it, one Jasper was unable to identify. “And I was well-settled with Viscount Aberdeen by the time Cheltenham had earned his way back into society’s good graces.”

“What of Wherewithal?” Matthew asked. “Did he earn his way back?”

“Withy has happily lived on the fringes for more than forty years, harassing and provoking his brother into further mischief every chance he gets.”

“Wait, are these the same brothers who fought a duel over Gwendolyn Aberdeen the morning she rode through Hyde Park in the altogether?” Pritchett asked.

“I saved my daughter from the both of them, even if I couldn’t save her from her own foolish vanity,” Alabaster replied. “One would think the brothers had long since learned their lesson, but their rivalry continues to run amuck to this day.”

“Are they still up to mischief with the ladies?” Lady Priscilla asked, wrinkling her nose in distaste. “They must be quite elderly.”

“Doddering old men.” Lilith flipped her fan open once more, slowly plying it back and forth as if she hadn’t a care in the world, as if she hadn’t intentionally sent her grandmother down a road that suddenly seemed fraught with hazardous twists and strewn with razor-sharp thorns. “And one of them a duke.”

Lady Priscilla blinked, her pretty little mouth fell open and an angry, mottled flush spread up her neck, skimmed along her square jaw and crested her cheeks. A tiny little squeak tripped off her lips, the sound rather like that a puppy makes when kicked, however accidently.

“Goodness, Sissy, have we shocked you speechless?” Lilith asked with a laugh, low and husky and dripping disdain. “Alabaster, we must mark the date down and celebrate it annually. The Day One of Dunaway’s Daughters was Dumbstruck has a nice ring to it.”

Instinctively, Jasper reached for Lilith, wanting only to soothe and protect her from the queer turn the conversation had taken, from the heavy tension settling around the table.

Lilith recoiled, her legs curling away from his touch, her eyes flashing fire over the fan she continued to ply before her face, slowly and methodically as if in cadence with a tempo locked inside her head.

“Lilith, surely you did not…the Duke of Cheltenham…he cannot be…” Lady Priscilla could not get the words out, but it hardly seemed to matter as everyone around the table, including Jasper whose wits had been scattered on the Cornish breeze, suddenly went still and silent.

“Do you think you are the first girl whose innocence and future were bargained away to settle someone else’s debt?” Lilith asked with what might have been either curiosity or surprise, or a bit of both. “Can you truly be so naïve as that?”

“Papa would not sell you to an old man,” Lady Priscilla protested desperately. “He wouldn’t. You’re his favorite!”

“How many times must I tell you Dunaway did not find me in a cabbage patch,” Lilith replied with a roll of her eyes. “I have a mother, such as she is, and like your mother, Gwendolyn wanted a duke for her daughter. The only difference is the skills we were taught and the market upon which our wares were displayed.”

Lady Priscilla’s eyes filled, her hands waving about as if seeking something or someone to hold onto as her world tipped on its axis.

Jasper knew precisely how the poor girl felt when his scattered wits suddenly coalesced, painting a startlingly clear picture with broad strokes and blindingly bright colors.

What sort of life were you raised for?

This has nothing to do with me and my life.

Except it had everything to do with Lilith and the life she’d been raised for.

For all her independence and stubbornness, Lilith had been no freer to choose her fate than any other woman born into the complex hierarchy of English society. Her future had been carved out before her birth, the path well-trodden by generations of female relations until every turn was clearly marked out for her to follow.

Lilith had been reared and educated expressly to become the mistress to a wealthy, powerful gentleman, an aristocrat with deep pockets only too willing to shower her with jewels and gowns and perhaps even affection.

She had offered up her slender, nubile body in trade for a life of luxury and ease, for the illusion of freedom and a place on the fringes of good society.

And when it proved necessary, to save her father thirty thousand pounds at three percent.

“What sort of market if not the marriage market?” Lady Priscilla asked. “What sort of skills?”

“A market where a lady’s virginity, rather than her sterling reputation or familial connections, is the prize,” Lilith replied. “As for skills, it’s quite simple really. While your mother was teaching you how to embroider a neat stitch, fill awkward silences with inane conversation and pour tea without spilling a drop, Gwendolyn was teaching me to remove a man’s boots, fill his empty head with flattery and roll a cheroot one-handed while unbuttoning his—”

“That’s enough.” Jasper’s voice was surprisingly steady considering the rage beating at him, sinking sharp talons into his flesh and ripping his furiously beating heart right out of his chest.

With a soft, whisper-thin laugh, Lilith slowly turned her head, hair flying around her pale face and her eyes glowing like jewels. “Is it, enough, Lord Malleville? Do you surrender?”

It took Jasper a moment to comprehend her words, to remember their exchange on the balcony that first night.

I will be forced to call for reinforcements and lay siege to your impressive battlements until you surrender.

Do your worst.

For you, I think only my best will do.

“Christ, I’m an idiot.” Jasper rose unsteadily to his feet, his vision blurring and blood roaring through his veins. “It was nothing more than a pretense, from the moment you alighted from the carriage until your female relations discovered me in your bed.”

“In my defense, you did follow me after I begged you, and very prettily if I do say so myself, to return to the house.” Lilith swung her legs over the side of the chaise and rose to stand before him with her head tilted back and her eyes—those lying, deceitful eyes—pinning him in place. And by God, but her beauty stole his breath even now, when he knew she’d wielded it as a weapon against him from the very beginning.

“With your words perhaps,” he snapped. “Your lips, eyes and luscious body begged for something else entirely.”

“You can hardly blame me for wanting you,” she replied with a dainty shrug of one bare shoulder, not the least intimidated by his temper. “Or for claiming you when the opportunity arose. I was not taught to resist temptation, after all.”

“And that little show you put on bathing in the candlelight,” he continued, ignoring her words altogether, his fury gathering momentum like a boulder rolling downhill. “That bit was a lovely prelude to the encore performance.”

“Encore performance?” she repeated, one golden brow winging up over the damn fan, as if daring him to continue while his family and hers made no effort whatsoever to turn away from the spectacle.

“I like your masculine beauty,” he mimicked. “I like that you would ruin all you hold dear for me.”

“Risk, my lord.” Lilith waved the fan so fast unruly curls took flight, lifting to shimmer around her head, a fallen angel’s tarnished halo. “There is a vast difference between one night of risk and a lifetime of ruin.”

There was something in her words, something in the faint tremor of her hand and the untamed curls flying about that pricked at the edges of Jasper’s awareness. Before he could grasp at the lose thread to unravel the thought, Lilith closed the fan with a deft snap of her wrist, scattering his wits to the far corners once more. Leaving only anger to shore up his flagging strength.