The Courtesan's Daughter (25 page)

Lord Ruan stopped before the Duchess of Hyde and the Countess of Dalby and executed a curt bow of greeting. It was only proper to greet his hostess, after all, and then Molly could provide an introduction to Sophia. Neat and simple.

And so it happened, exactly as he’d planned it, as far as the introductions anyway. Beyond that simple beginning, things spun rapidly in unexpected directions.

“We have never met, Lord Ruan, and yet I feel I know you,” Sophia said after he had complimented the Duchess of Hyde on the beauty of her new wallpaper and Molly had responded in kind by complimenting him on the fineness of his matched grays, purchased the previous week. Just as he was drawing breath to respond to Lady Dalby’s remark with some innocuous comment that at some point, all members of the ton must know each other, she continued. “It is surely because you have been following me, close and yet so shy? Awaiting a moment, the perfect moment, for an introduction? You must learn to be more forward, Lord Ruan. A man of your years and distinction simply must learn not to skulk about in corners, all eyes and no tongue.”

He was struck speechless. Molly’s discreet cough, only just covering a rather girlish giggle, readjusted all his expectations. Sophia was clearly a woman who demanded that all expectation be adjusted upon meeting her.

“I ask your pardon, Lady Dalby,” he said. “Now that I know your preferences, I shall be all tongue.”

Molly gasped so loudly that she choked. Sophia neither gasped nor choked. Sophia Dalby raised her chin and looked him over. He let her look; in fact, he rather enjoyed it. He let the silence, a silence in which they studied each other blatantly, grow until Molly Hyde grew a bit pink about the throat, and then he said, “And now it is you, Lady Dalby, who is all eyes and no tongue.”

“And is that your preference, Lord Ruan?” Sophia asked politely.

“Lady Dalby, do you seek to know my preferences? I am flattered.”

“Lord Ruan, you are easily flattered.”

“Lady Dalby, with a woman who is all tongue, I am easily won.”

He feared Molly Hyde was close to fainting. Sophia was not.

“But, Lord Ruan,” she said with a cold smile and slow shake of her head, “I am not. If you will excuse me?” she asked of the duchess and of him. He could do nothing but bow in acquiescence. “Will your eyes follow me, Lord Ruan?” she whispered as she passed him.

Sophia walked exactly four steps away from him before she turned her head and gazed at him from over her bare white shoulder, a few artful black curls skimming her back. His eyes had followed her—how could they not? Their eyes met. She smiled, and then she turned and walked away. His eyes followed her until she was lost in the crowd.

Intriguing.

Twenty-one

INTRIGUING man, that Lord Ruan, though rather forward for her tastes. Sophia had absolutely no time for intrigues; she had to get Caro married to Ashdon at the first opportunity. Tomorrow would suit her very well and, by the look on Ashdon’s dear face, as soon as possible would suit him very well indeed.
Well done, Caro.

She also had to arrange for the bans to be read for Staverton and Anne Warren. Everything there must proceed with propriety and precision; Anne deserved nothing less, as this marriage would move her into the peerage. No shadow would be allowed to blight it.

Sophia was also perfectly aware that Lord Westlin would do everything he could to ruin both marriages. Tiresome, but there it was. He was the most tenaciously ill-tempered man, always pushing about, determined to make a fuss about the most inconsequential things. Like the marriage of his heir to the only daughter of his first mistress. Really. Sophia smiled. Was that anything to make a fuss about?

EVERYONE was making such a
fuss
. Caro didn’t enjoy it the least bit. Just because she had been given pearls by three gentlemen; it wasn’t as if she had
asked
for the pearls. That had to count for something. Judging by the look on Ashdon’s face as he nodded in curt civility to Lord Drayton about something to do with horses, Ashdon didn’t act as if he thought it counted for much. He acted, now that her bodice was firmly in place and had been so for almost a quarter of an hour, as if
she
were somehow to blame for the pearls, the bodice, and even the betrothal.

It occurred to her, a bit late she had to admit, that Ashdon just might be as famously ill-tempered as his father. That wouldn’t do at all. She was
not
going to live her life being snapped at and blamed for rain when he wanted sun, or whatever it was that made Ashdon so snappish.

She was well aware, experience being a wonderful teacher, that Ashdon could be kept docile, one might even say
malleable
, when her clothing was in a certain state of relaxation. But she couldn’t spend her whole life walking about without her bodice tied. Even if it did feel rather wonderful when he touched her …
there
, she must maintain some standards, and walking around bare-breasted was going to be one of them. Or not walking around bare-breasted. Whichever. The whole subject made her wooly-headed.

Lord Drayton had just finished speaking, his voice rambling off gradually as was his habit, and she was certain Ashdon was going to reply with an equally long-winded reply about bloodlines or some essentially boring rejoinder, when she hissed quietly at Ashdon’s shoulder, which was all she could reach without him bending down to her, which of course he would not do being the ill-tempered oaf that he was, “I did not
ask
for those pearls, you know.”

“Excuse us, Lord Drayton,” Ashdon said politely, his hand very firm on her elbow as he led her toward the doorway of the music room, possibly so that she couldn’t be allowed to poke him in the stomach with it. She’d considered it. “You certainly
did
ask for the pearls you’re wearing,” he breathed, smiling at Lady Hartington, who grinned back at him. Lady Hartington was at least seventy and so her grin looked rather more like a leer.

“I only asked for these because you seemed so determined to
buy
me with something!” she snarled softly, smiling frigidly at Louisa Kirkland, who had almost magically appeared in the doorway to the blue reception room. Louisa had clearly gone the wrong way on the assemblie circuit. How gauche.

“As a courtesan, these sorts of gifts are both expected and required,” Ashdon ground out, smiling rather too brightly at Lady Louisa. Louisa smiled brightly in response.

Wasn’t it just lovely that Ashdon saved all his good cheer and civility for Louisa Kirkland?

“You know, Lord Ashdon,” she said with brittle sweetness, “while I’m well aware that you’re an ill-tempered
lout
, I did think you possessed some small intelligence. I’m so sorry to be proven wrong on that account. I can’t think what sort of children we shall produce between us. In fact, if not for the fact that
you’ve ruined me completely
,” she said, keeping her very false smile perfectly in place on her very stiff face, “I would refuse to marry you and take up the life you seem determined to foist upon me.”

He appeared almost speechless. It didn’t last long. Pity.

“Foist upon you?” he growled, nodding savagely at Louisa Kirkland as he not very politely dragged her into the blue reception room. Louisa Kirkland blanched and nearly tripped in getting out of Ashdon’s path. That bit was rather nice. “
You
are the one who refused me! You are the one who declared it was her life’s goal to become the plaything of any man with the price to play. You are the one who demanded the damned pearls in the first place.”

“You know perfectly well that the pearls were just a … test,” she said, pulling her arm free and ignoring the stares they were drawing. Guests were entering and leaving the house by the main doors in the blue reception room. Actually, they were rather more entering than leaving. She supposed she and Ashdon were drawing a crowd. She supposed she should care. She didn’t. “Or you’d know perfectly well if you had any sense at all.”

“If I had any sense at all,” he growled rather too loudly considering that at least two dozen people were staring at them avidly, “I wouldn’t have beggared myself in trying to avoid meeting you. I wouldn’t have taken a strand of priceless pearls from Cal. I wouldn’t have defied my father, and I wouldn’t have dragged you into Hyde’s dressing room to do this!”

He kissed her then. He pulled her to him by her arms, leaving bruises she was certain, and kissed her hard on the mouth. It did all the things to her that his kisses always did. Weak, breathless, wobbly, and warm in places she hadn’t known existed until Ashdon had started kissing her.

When he released her, he whispered harshly, “I’m going to marry you, Caro. It’s going to ruin me, but I’m going to marry you.”

“That’s all you ever had to do, Ash,” she sighed, still trying to clear her vision from that kiss. “Can’t you see that marrying me is more fiscally responsible than paying for me?”

He didn’t answer. He dragged her out into the London night, without even stopping long enough for her to retrieve her wrap. She didn’t bother to make a fuss; Caro was too busy thinking that going about bare-breasted definitely had its advantages.

 
NATURALLY, Westlin made a fuss when he heard about it. It was to be expected. In fact, the entire assemblie waited for it as confidently as one awaits the dawn.

He did it quietly, that much can be said for him, but perhaps it might have been that no one was paying particular attention to Lord Westlin. The whole of the assemblie was discussing, politely, greedily, and speculatively, the obvious evidence that Caroline Trevelyan had grown quite completely into her mother’s daughter.

Naturally, comparisons were made to the night that Sophia had inspired both Westlin and Dalby to come to blows over her. Those who remembered that evening almost twenty years earlier were practically pummeled for their recollections. No one asked Westlin, for obvious reasons.

Sophia, also for obvious reasons, felt it impolitic and impolite to speak to anything that had or had not occurred twenty years previous. She said quite openly that she had no wish to upstage her daughter’s rather stellar success on the marriage mart, stating without hesitation that she was certain, and was equally certain it was obvious to all, that Lady Caroline and Lord Ashdon had a markedly tempestuous and therefore passionate regard for one another and that she could speak from experience that marriages built on such foundations bore rather delicious fruit.

Delicious
, that was the word she used and she used it somewhat frequently.

Ruan was becoming rather too keenly aware that he noticed too much about Sophia Dalby. He was also aware that he was intrigued by her use of the word
delicious.

What
had
happened twenty years ago to earn Sophia both Westlin’s enmity and Dalby’s title?

 
“PURE folly,” Staverton grumbled to Anne, his future viscountess. “Westlin has a talent for trouble and he practices it diligently.”

“You don’t think he can stop their marriage, do you, Lord Staverton?” Anne asked softly. They had made their way slowly through Hyde House, trailing well behind Caro and Lord Ashdon, paused in the now infamous rose dressing room, and were now in the music room. Anne had a colossal headache. She wanted to go home, have a drink of chocolate, and then strangle Caro. In exactly that order.

What had Caro been thinking to have three men toss pearl necklaces at her, and at the most-talked-of event of their social year! It was exactly the sort of adventure that ruined a girl and made marriage, respectable marriage, an impossibility. Small chance now of Lord Westlin approving the match, and what heir would risk disobeying his father? Oh, Lord Ashdon was well away now and Caro without a hope of happiness.

“I think he’ll try,” Lord Staverton said grimly, “and poor luck for Caroline if he does. Westlin keeps a tight fist around Ashdon’s throat, always has done, and Ashdon has been taught well to heel to Westlin’s voice.”

Anne’s heart sank to her feet. “But why does he hate Lady Dalby so? This is all of her, isn’t it? Do
you
know what happened twenty years past, Lord Staverton?”

Lord Staverton blinked rapidly and cleared his throat noisily. “I do, but it’s not a tale for mixed company, Mrs. Warren. That’s all I’ll say on the matter. Except to add that Lord Westlin is behaving like a complete idiot, as usual.”

“Isn’t it comforting when people react just as you expect them to?” Lord Dutton said, entering their conversation unannounced and uninvited. Unwelcome as well, as long as Anne was compiling a list of offenses.

“If they react well, then yes,” she answered, before turning to Lord Staverton and smiling up at his uneven eyes. They were
nice
eyes with a thoughtful and considerate gaze, very much unlike Lord Dutton’s sharp blue gaze.

“I had no idea you were an admirer of Lady Caroline’s,” Lord Staverton said to Dutton. “I suppose you’re put out that she returned your necklace?”

“Do I look put out, Lord Staverton?” Dutton said softly, before turning to look down at Anne.

Anne turned her eyes away to admire the truly magnificent crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling of the Hydes’ music room. It glimmered like ice, rather like Lord Dutton’s clear blue eyes.

Anne hated ice.

“I have found,” Lord Dutton continued, “that one woman, however beautiful, however skilled, is very much like another. Don’t you agree?”

“I certainly do not,” Staverton huffed, casting a crooked glance over to Anne. Anne returned his look with a smile and a subtle shrug of her shoulders. “And I find your conversation in this company entirely ill-conceived.”

“Oh, I think Mrs. Warren, a woman who certainly possesses her own skills of less than mysterious origins, will not disagree with me. Perhaps she would even add that, from her perspective, one man is very like another.”

Staverton banged his gold-handled cane on the floorboards, causing at least twenty people to hush their conversations and look their way. This was exactly the sort of attention Anne abhorred and, once again, it was Dutton who was to blame. Perhaps Caro was more of an innocent in the evening’s adventures than she had supposed. It was Lord Dutton, after all, who’d been directly responsible for both of their misadventures at Hyde House. The man seemed to crave unwelcome attention.