The Wedding Challenge (18 page)

She took a shaky breath and let it out, feeling once again that she was teetering on the edge of something, and that, she thought, was even more frightening. For if she fell here, she knew, it was not her virtue that would be lost, but her heart.

B
ROMWELL AND
C
ALLIE SAID LITTLE
on the ride home. Uppermost in their minds was the passion that still hummed between them. It was not something that either wanted to discuss, and it required a careful concentration to keep it at bay.

He walked her to Francesca’s door, stepping inside only to take his leave of her. Then he turned and trotted back down the steps to the hansom cab, his face settling into grim lines. A few quick words to the driver sent them back to Vauxhall Gardens at a fast pace.

When they reached the gardens, Bromwell headed purposefully toward his sister’s supper box. He was greeted by the sight of several intoxicated young men, as well as the decidedly tipsy Miss Swanson and another young woman he had never met. His sister was sitting on the lap of a man he had never seen, the fellow boldly nuzzling her neck.

Once again he cleared the front wall of the box in a lithe jump rather than taking the time to enter through the rear door. Walking straight to his sister, he wrapped his hand around her upper arm and pulled her to her feet.

She let out a gasp, turning toward him with a snarl before she realized who he was. “Brom! Hello, dearest. I wondered where you were.”

“And did you wonder where Lady Calandra was?” he asked, his voice hard and clipped.

“I presumed…” A smile curved her lips as she cast him a sly upward glance “…that she was with you.”

“It is fortunate for you and for everyone else here that she was,” he shot back, his eyes bright with a cold, fierce anger.

Daphne blinked, stunned into momentary silence.

“I say!” The man upon whose lap Daphne had been sitting rose to his feet, swaying. “Who the devil do you think you are? I ought to call you out for speaking to…to…the lady that way.”

“I am ‘the lady’s’ brother, and I assure you that I answer only a gentleman’s challenge. Your sort I am more likely to take out back and thrash a little respect into.”

“What? By God, sir!” The other man raised his arms into a position that faintly resembled a pugilist’s stance. “Say that to my face! I dare you.”

“I believe I just did,” Bromwell replied. His lips curling in disgust, he grabbed the man’s lapels and yanked, pulling him off his feet and half onto the front ledge of the supper box. With his other hand, he grasped one of the man’s legs and shoved him up and over the edge, where he tumbled to the ground.

He then advanced toward two other men, who were sitting beyond Daphne, drunkenly gaping at him. At his approach, both took to their feet, stumbling hastily to the back door and out.

“Cousin!” Archie Tilford rose to his feet and executed a perfect bow, which was marred only by his tipping too far forward and having to grab the back of a nearby chair to keep from falling on his face. “Glad to see you. Good thing, sending those chaps off. Didn’t like them.”

“Bloody hell, Archie, why did you not do something earlier?” Bromwell asked in exasperation.

“Well…” Tilford considered the question. “Not the sort of thing I do, you see. Sort of thing
you
do.”

Bromwell grimaced and turned toward the elegantly dressed Mr. Pacewell and Mr. Sackville, now looking somewhat worse for wear. “And you two! Is everyone here completely foxed?”

They all glanced around at each other, as though unsure.

“Good Gad,” Bromwell said in disgust. “Archie, you and your friends haul up Mr. Swanson and take yourselves home. I will see that the ladies get back to my sister’s house.”

The men hastened to do as he said, pulling the limp form of Swanson from his chair, looped his arms over their shoulders and half walked, half dragged him from the supper box. Miss Swanson, now in tears, and Miss Turner gathered up their dominoes and masks, which they had long since discarded, as well as their fans. Miss Turner, it seemed, had lost one of her shoes and seemed to have no idea where it might have gone.

Bromwell shot his sister a fulminating glance. “Well, you will simply have to borrow a pair from Lady Swithington. When we get back to her house, she will write a note to both your parents—or whatever poor benighted souls have guardianship of you—and say that due to the lateness of the hour and everyone’s exhaustion, the two of you are spending the night with her. Hopefully that will serve to salvage your reputations—providing no one who knew you saw you here tonight out of your disguises.”

This speech sent Miss Swanson into further wails, and even Miss Turner’s foolish expression began to give way to trepidation. The earl ignored them, turning back to his sister and raising his brow.

“Very well, Brom,” she told him testily, grabbing up her own things. “I am ready. Goodness, but you have turned into a prim sort. Is that Lady Calandra’s influence? I must say, it is not appealing.”

“Stop.” His face was tight, his eyes hard. “Do not even mention her, or I fear you will hear much more than you wish to. We will discuss this later, after your charges have been put to bed.”

With a shrug, she wrapped her domino around her and swept from the box, the girls hurrying after her. Bromwell escorted them home in silence. Miss Swanson was still sniffling and dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief, and Miss Turner seemed subdued and even, perhaps, a trifle ill. Lady Daphne kept her face turned to the window, even though the curtain cut off all view of the outside.

Once they were inside, Lady Daphne’s maid took the two girls up to bed, while Daphne sat down with a sigh and wrote out notes to their parents as Bromwell had instructed her. Once she had sent the notes off with a footman, she turned to her brother, crossing her arms.

“Very well. Out with it before you choke,” she told him shortly.

“What the devil did you think you were doing?” he burst out. “Leaving Lady Calandra alone like that? Don’t you realize what damage you could have done to her reputation?”

“Really, Brom, when did you turn into such a puritan? I was trying to help you.”

“Help me? By exposing Callie to drunken bounders? By abandoning her in the midst of Vauxhall Gardens?”

“Now that is doing it a bit too brown, don’t you think?” Daphne retorted. “You make it sound as though I left her in the middle of the promenade. She was inside a supper box.”

“Where any passing stranger could glance inside and see that she was alone,” he shot back. “Oh, except, of course, for the man who was dead drunk on the table!”

“I knew you would be along soon,” Daphne explained reasonably, “and that she would not be there for long. I did not intend for that foolish Swanson boy to pass out. How was I to know he could not hold his liquor? I simply wanted to arrange it so that you and she were alone together.” Her face softened, and she came toward him, holding out her hands to him. “Come, Brom, pray do not be displeased with me. I wanted only to aid you in your endeavor. I saw how close an eye that Haughston woman kept on Lady Calandra. I simply tried to arrange a situation where you could have her to yourself for a little while.” Daphne smiled a little smugly. “Long enough for you to accomplish your purpose.”

“What? Ruining her good name?” he asked, not reaching out to take her hands. “Daphne, how could you think I would want you to do that? I told you I had no intention of destroying her reputation. Why should she be harmed? It was her brother who hurt you. He is the one who should pay for it, not Callie.”

“What does it matter if she is hurt?” Daphne shot back. “She is a Lilles, just as he is, and I am sure that she is as haughty and cold as the duke. Or that bitch Francesca Haughston! They are as alike as two peas in a pod. Such fine ladies, such delicate airs, as if they had never had a wicked thought in their heads. Oh, no, they are far too refined to even think of lying down with a man.”

Her face was hard and bitter, and her brother regarded her with some shock. “Daphne! I have never heard you speak so…look so…”

“Try living trapped in Wales for the last fifteen years with some horrid old man!” she cried. “Never able to come to London or have any fun. A trip to Bath was considered his utmost treat! And all the while I was getting older, losing my looks….” Tears welled in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks.

“Daphne…” Her tears touched him, dissolving much of his anger, and Bromwell went to her, putting his arm around her. “I am sorry. I hate that you had to marry an old man whom you did not love. And then to lose your unborn child after making that sacrifice…It was terrible, and you should not have had to do it. I wish that I had been older, wiser. I should have done something besides rush in there and try to call Rochford out. I wish to God that I had been able to help you. But you are not old, and you are still the most beautiful woman in London.”

Daphne relaxed against him at his words, and she turned her face up to him, smiling despite the tears glittering like diamonds in her eyes. “Really? Do you truly think I am the most beautiful woman in London?”

The thought of Callie flashed into his head, but he pushed the image aside, saying stoutly, “Of course I do. You are. You always have been. You know that.”

“There. I knew you could not love her more than you do me,” she said with satisfaction, wiping away her tears with her fingers.

“Love her more than you! Of course not,” Bromwell said, reaching into his pocket and handing her his crisp white handkerchief. He released her shoulders and stepped away. “How could you possibly think that? I do not love her at all. I simply do not want an innocent person hurt. The Duke of Rochford is the only one I care to harm. I told you that when we talked before. I never meant to ruin her. Only to bring Rochford out of his den and force him to deal with me.”

“And what did you think would happen to her?” Daphne asked. “How could you harm Rochford without harming his sister? If you dance attendance on a woman, she is bound to expect something of you. A gentleman does not lavish attention on a woman unless he is trying to seduce her or he expects to ask for her hand. It is certainly an embarrassment if he does not then make her an offer. All of the
ton
will gossip about it.”

“But I have only begun courting her. I have not—” He stopped.

“You have not what? Called upon her practically every day?” Daphne asked. “Invited her to go riding at Richmond Park or taken her out in your curricle? Or popped up at every party she has attended?”

Bromwell frowned. “I have perhaps hung about her more than I had intended,” he admitted. “I had not expected her to be quite so assiduously chaperoned, I think. I had thought I would be able to spend more time with her alone.”

“That is precisely why I arranged that little interlude at Vauxhall Gardens,” Daphne exclaimed triumphantly. “So that you could have the opportunity to be alone with her. If there is no whiff of scandal, why should Rochford be alarmed?”

He sighed and ran his hand back through his hair. “I don’t know what to say. If you are right, then I have already harmed her.”

“That is right,” Daphne agreed. “So…”

“Perhaps I should stop.”

“What?” Daphne gaped at him, thunderstruck. “You mean, end this? Do nothing to her? To Rochford?”

His mouth twitched in a grim semblance of a smile. “I have hopes I still will hear from Rochford.”

“But Lady Calandra? You are going to stop pursuing her?”

“I am not sure,” he said, looking distracted. “I must think on this.”

His sister opened her mouth to speak again, but he was no longer paying attention. Turning, he strode toward the door and down the hall, leaving Daphne staring after him.

Bromwell took his greatcoat and hat from the footman and went outside. He jammed the hat down on his head, and threw on his coat as he trotted down the steps and onto the sidewalk. A breeze fluttered at the edges of the fabric and stole beneath it, but he did not bother to do up the buttons as he strode along the street, scowling.

Should he stop calling upon Callie? Something twisted inside him at the thought, and he knew that he did not want to end this. He thought of her smile, her dancing dark eyes, the thick lustrous black curls that made his fingers itch to touch them. The idea of never seeing those things again, never again enfolding her in his arms or pressing his lips to hers as he had tonight, made him want to smash his fist into something.

Yet if he continued to see her, how would it end? In all likelihood with himself and Callie’s brother at each other’s throats. It would be pistols at dawn or, at best, them going at each other with their bare fists. The one way it was certain not to end was with what polite society would expect—Bromwell proposing marriage to her. He let out a snort at the picture of Rochford’s reaction should Bromwell ask him for his sister’s hand in marriage.

Rochford would never allow it. And, of course, Bromwell knew that he would never ask it. Ally himself with the family of the man who had disgraced his sister? It was unthinkable. It would be a betrayal of Daphne, a thoroughly dishonorable thing to do.

If he had no intention of marrying Callie, though, he should not continue seeing her. Daphne was right, of course. His pursuit of Callie had been determined. Everyone, including Callie, would expect a proposal of marriage from him if he continued to court her in this way. Even after the few weeks that he had been calling on her, it would cause gossip if he suddenly stopped seeing her.