Viscount Vagabond (15 page)

Now, though she found the way he leered at her bodice highly objectionable, she bore his clumsy compliments with frigid composure. Looking, she reminded herself, was all he’d ever be able to do.

She was delighted that she could decline his request for the next two dances without uttering any falsehood. Her pleasure would have been unalloyed had he not gone on to ask for the supper dance. She had hoped the somewhat absentminded Mr. Langdon would remember to ask her about that. He was very attractive, and his soft voice was so calming. Now she darted a pleading glance at Lady Andover, who promptly came to her rescue.

“So sorry, My Lord,” the countess told Lord Browdie with a cold smile. “Another gentleman has won that honour.”

Mr. Langdon appeared in time to hear this exchange. When he led Miss Pelliston out, he expressed his disappointment. He looked so forlorn that Catherine had to stifle a maternal urge to brush his hair back from his forehead and murmur something soothing. She too was disappointed. Mr. Langdon seemed so gentle and intelligent. She would have enjoyed talking quietly with him during supper. Now she would dine partnerless—though that was hardly a tragedy. Her cousin and his wife would be with her and they were both most entertaining—and had she not already achieved undreamed-of success?

Having dragged six debutantes about the dance floor, Lord Rand decided he’d done his duty. In fact, he might be on his way to fulfilling the most unnerving duty of all.

He’d never expected to meet in elevated company a woman whose physical attributes so perfectly met his ideals. Not only was Lady Diana in no danger of breaking if one touched her, but she was generously formed and stunningly beautiful. Her throaty voice was a merciful relief from the usual high-pitched nasalities. She did not chatter endlessly about nothing and certainly didn’t lecture about everything. Actually, she’d said very little, he now realised. Instead, she’d encouraged him to talk, and upon a subject she seemed to find as fascinating as he did.

The viscount’s obligation to marry and get heirs began to seem less onerous. Tall, fair Junos were a rarity, even in the crowded London Marriage Mart. Courting Lady Diana would not be a punishment... still, he needn’t make so weighty a decision this instant.

Nudging duty aside for the moment, Lord Rand headed for the card room. There he had the dubious honour of being introduced to Lord Browdie and the satisfaction of finding the brute as contemptible as he’d imagined. The viscount s enjoyment of the evening was further heightened when he proceeded to relieve Lord Browdie of a respectable sum of money, despite the rather paltry stakes.

Lord Browdie was a poor loser. Though he managed to put on a swaggering show of hilarity at the outcome, he decided he disliked Lord Rand. After the card game broke up and its participants filed out to supper, dislike grew into loathing. Lord Browdie watched the blond viscount saunter confidently up to the Earl and Countess of Andover, make some remark that caused the couple to smile, and offer his arm to Miss Pelliston.

Lord Browdie had expected to find Catherine languishing at the sidelines with the other antidotes. To discover her dancing her feet off the entire evening was a greater shock than her improved appearance. He felt he’d been villainously deceived and illused, and though his feelings for her were no more affectionate at present than they’d ever been, he remembered her property and dowry with every sort of tenderness. He recalled as well the numerous rebuffs he’d borne this evening from all those other females Reggie had claimed were panting to breed Browdie heirs.

How he’d like to wipe that insipid smile off her sharp little face, and how he’d love to put that grinning, yellow-haired Exquisite in his place. Much as he would have enjoyed these innocent diversions, Lord Browdie had no idea how to bring them about. He decided, therefore, to leave the party and get roaring drunk in more congenial surroundings.

“You see, Catherine?” Lady Andover was saying. “We spoke no falsehood to Lord Browdie. My instincts must have told me Max would forget to ask anyone to sup with him. Though that’s hardly complimentary to you, perhaps he’ll contrive to be entertaining enough to make you forget the insult.” The countess took her husband’s arm and they preceded Max and Catherine to the supper room.

“Nevermind what she says,” Max told his partner. “Browdie was deuced generous to confound all the other fellows’ hopes for your company. Because of him, my own lack of virtue is rewarded. If I’d been playing the proper gentleman, I’d have to sup with someone else.”

Miss Pelliston found herself more pleased than she wished to be with the way the supper issue had resolved itself. Self-annoyance made her face rather stiff as she answered, “Since taking a lady into supper is hardly a moral obligation, your argument is unsound. In the first place, you committed no crime. In the second, if you had, there are a number of ladies here whose company far better qualifies as ‘rewarding.’ Your argument for the rewards of wickedness is specious, sir,” she concluded with satisfaction.

“I’m a Sophist, am I? Oh, don’t look so amazed,” he added as her wide hazel eyes opened wider. “I learnt philosophy as well as the next chap, I suppose. Which is how I know that your logic is shaky. You don’t know a thing about those other ladies, yet you claim them more rewarding company than yourself. Shall we take a poll of the gentlemen, Miss Pelliston?”

“No, of course not. It was a pretty compliment. I would not have argued if you had not used it to defend an immoral philosophy—though I would be forced to admit that virtue is not always rewarded in this world and wickedness often is. But you see, you were merely forgetful, not wicked.”

“Then you’ll allow the pretty compliment to stand?”

She bit her lip. “I suppose I must, for you have twisted the issues so that... well, never mind. You are only trying to divert me, as her ladyship suggested, and I have no business scolding you for it.”

“Of course not. You never scolded Jack Langdon, I’m sure. Why, he spent at least ten minutes raving about you. Then he forgot all about it and wandered off to find his book. I’m amazed he didn’t have it with him when he danced with you. Often does, you know.”

“Yes, Lady Andover mentioned that he was a tad eccentric. Still, I found his comments on the Medes and Persians most intriguing, though I’m afraid my ancient history is rather weak.”

They’d reached the room where a very large number of very small tables had been set out to accommodate hungry guests. Lord Rand drew out a chair for Miss Pelliston. As she sat down, he leaned over her shoulder and said in a low voice, “I’m sure he was too busy talking himself and staring into your lovely eyes to notice your scholarly failings. Or if he did, he’s far more levelheaded than he should be. You look like a pink rose.”

Miss Pelliston turned pink enough. Lord Rand stared blankly at her for a moment before he remembered where he was and hastily took his seat beside her. Why had he uttered that revolting treacle?

He now wished he hadn’t offered to sit out the waltz with her. That would not take place until sometime after supper and he wanted out of this confounded menagerie now, before every last vestige of his common sense was stifled by etiquette.

Meanwhile, if he didn’t want her to get the wrong idea, he’d better bring the conversation into more impersonal channels.

“Miss Pelliston, you are behaving very badly,” he lightly chided.

“Why, what have I done? This is the proper spoon, I’m sure,” said Miss Pelliston, surveying her silverware in some alarm.

“You were supposed to make a clever retort to my compliment.”

“I know—but I just couldn’t think of a single thing,” she confessed with chagrin.

“I’ll think of it for you. You must warn me of your thorns.”

She considered. “Thorns—that seems apt enough. And the part about my eyes?” she asked, focusing those brilliant orbs upon him.

He leaned a hairsbreadth closer. “Yes,” he said, wondering why he felt as though he were in quicksand, “your eyes are lovely.”

“That’s what you told me,” his disciple reminded patiently. “What must I answer?”

He hauled his attention back to his plate. “Why, that they’re sharp enough to detect the wicked truths lurking behind honeyed words.”

“That sounds rather like a scold.”

“Not if you smile when you say it, and especially not if you contrive to blush at the same time. That will encourage the gentleman to declare his innocence.”

Miss Pelliston sighed. “This is very complicated.”

“Yes,” his lordship concurred, more heartily than she could know. “Very complicated. Anyhow, you’re thinking instead of eating and you’ll need sustenance if you hope to dance until dawn. We’ll talk of something less taxing, shall we? How long before I can expect Jemmy to begin lecturing me on the rise and fall of the Roman Empire?”

Relieved to turn the conversation from herself, Catherine responded with more of her usual poise, though her mind drifted elsewhere.

She thought she’d been handling his lordship’s altogether unexpected attentions with reasonable composure—until he’d bent to whisper in her ear. Then she had become acutely aware of a faint scent—a mixture of soap and something woodsy and cheroots and wine.

Examined objectively, this should not be an aesthetically pleasing combination of aromas, the two latter ingredients being vivid reminders of masculine frailties. Lord Browdie always stank of tobacco and spirits and that, along with his other unfortunate personal habits, usually made her wish herself in another county when he was by.

Lord Rand aroused an altogether different response, a host of sensations so novel that she could not be certain what they were. She realised, however, that these feelings were not altogether objective. Turning gooseflesh all over and having to count to twenty to settle one’s pulse back to normal rhythm was not her idea of aesthetic detachment.

Except for ruthless exposure to most of her father’s vices, Catherine had lived a very sheltered, isolated life. She had never had a friend her own age. There was no room for sentiment or frivolity in her education. Had she not been such a voracious reader on her own, she might never have known that such a thing as flirtation existed. Any tender, silly sentiments she’d felt before had been summoned up by plays, poetry, and novels, and had always seemed to belong to a fantasy world completely unconnected with her own sober existence.

Now she began to understand—viscerally—Sophia Western’s trembling when Tom Jones was near. This was troubling. One ought not be so susceptible to a few pleasing words. If she did not keep a careful lookout, she would imagine herself in love with every gentleman who flattered her.

Lord Rand merely did what was expected at these affairs, she reminded herself. His behaviour seemed out of character only because she’d never seen him in such an environment before. Obviously, he could not have intended that she take his remarks seriously or he would not have offered
to teach her how to play the game. If, at the moment, the game seemed perilous to one’s peace of mind, that was because new experiences were often unnerving. Once she mastered the necessary skills, she would go about the business as coolly as he did.

Not that she meant to become a coquette. Even if capable of so far lowering her standards, Catherine was incapable of playing the part. She’d only look ridiculous. She wished she could find some safe island between prudery and impropriety—but the Beau Monde offered no solid moral ground. Hypocrisy seemed to be the fashionable equivalent of propriety, discretion indistinguishable from morality, and the rules seemed to constantly shift on whim.

Still, that was the way of the world. If Lord Rand could navigate these treacherous waters with such skill, there was no reason an erudite young lady could not.

As long as he’d already plunged into the turbulent waters of the Beau Monde, Lord Rand decided he might as well swim the distance. Dutifully he called the following day upon the young ladies with whom he’d danced. Among these was Lady Diana, whose mama beamed as the viscount entered her ornate drawing room.

The young lady was fortunate, Max thought, to have been built to such generous proportions; otherwise she’d have been lost among the bric-a-brac. The room was large enough, but so thickly furnished with ancestral wealth that it seemed a museum whose collection had outgrown it. The walls suffocated under the weight of heavy tapestries and massive paintings, the latter encased in thickly carved gilded frames. Everywhere was gilt and ornate carving— chairs and tables so ponderous that any one would require a dozen strong men to lift it.

Lady Diana managed to hold her own among this gilded magnificence. She accepted with quiet graciousness his tribute of compliments and all the other nonsense he uttered about the pleasure of her company the previous evening. As he found himself speaking mainly with her mama, the disloyal thought occurred that perhaps gracious acceptance was the sum of Lady Diana’s conversational talents.

Her mother must have had the same thought. Out of the corner of his eye Lord Rand noted the minatory glance Lady Glencove shot her daughter.

“My Lord, I am so glad you found a moment to stop with
us,” Lady Diana obediently began. “I had been endeavouring without success to locate upon Papa’s maps the town you described so beautifully last night. Is it part of the United States proper?”

Lord Rand ought to have been flattered that the young lady had exerted herself to examine maps. It did not occur to him to be flattered. Between his starched neckcloth and the oppressive room he was certain he would be asphyxiated, and his mind was fixed on getting out to the street where he might loosen his cravat and breathe.