A Bride by Moonlight (15 page)

“Industrial
folk—?” Lady Hepplewood shoved back her chair and stood. “As in . . . what? Cotton mills?
Coal
mines?” She hurled her napkin down with what looked like suppressed rage. “Not another word, Anthony. You will get up, and escort me to my private sitting room.
Now
.”

Hepplewood’s lips thinned. Then, with a silent oath, he tossed his napkin down, and followed his mother from the room.

Diana Jeffers had collapsed back into her chair, trembling. But Gwyneth merely watched her aunt and cousin go, her gaze still emotionless. “Well,” she said blandly, “it’s a grievous day indeed when a fellow must turn from London’s moneylenders to the Midlands’ millers in order to keep his creditors at bay.”

“
Gwyneth!
” Diana sobbed. “How vile!”

Gwyneth just shrugged. “All I’m saying is Tony must be in deep this time to surrender his precious bachelorhood. And now Aunt Hepplewood is going to flay the hide off his back for his choice.”

At that, Diana Jeffers burst into tears, threw back her chair so hard it tumbled over, then bolted from the room with one hand clapped over her mouth. Lisette could only stare at the door through which everyone had fled.

Gwyneth simply sighed, and continued calmly stirring sugar into her tea. “Rather like an overwrought
opéra comique
, isn’t it?”

Lisette drew a deep breath. “Would it be frightfully inappropriate of me to ask what just happened?”

Humor sketched across Gwyneth’s face. “I wondered how long your circumspection would hold out.” Then she heaved a sigh, and laid down her teaspoon. “No, it’s not inappropriate, precisely. Tony’s right; you’ll eventually be mistress of this whole mess.”

“Oh, no.” Lisette threw up a hand. “I aspire to be mistress over no one, Gwyneth. I just . . . I just feel sorry for them. For Miss Jeffers, especially.”

“Oh, never mind Diana,” said Gwyneth cavalierly. “She can never bear to see Tony hurt, that’s all.”

“They are close?”

“As a child she was his little shadow,” said Gwyneth with a shrug, “and Anne was worse. But they cannot see that the sweet boy they grew up with has turned rakish and dissolute. Just like Uncle Hep, Anne and Diana imagine Tony can do no wrong. And Aunt Hepplewood is left to clean up the mess.”

“How tragic,” said Lisette.

“Tragic?” Again, Gwyneth shrugged. “Mostly for poor Mr. Willet. Tony has either already compromised his daughter, or he desperately needs his money—both, most likely.”

“
Both?
”

Gwyneth flashed a sardonic smile. “London bred as you are, Miss Colburne, you must surely grasp the term
fortune hunter?
If a man is handsome enough, it takes little effort to entice a girl just up from the country into a dark corner and blacken her reputation—and all the quicker if her father is rich.”

Lisette was painfully aware. Lord Rowend had always claimed it was why her parents had wed. Were it true, her grandfather would have been left with little alternative save to accept Sir Arthur Colburne’s marriage proposal.

It was the first time, Lisette realized, she’d even considered it from Rowend’s vantage point.

“I daresay such marriages do happen,” she murmured, wondering how far to press her luck with Gwyneth. “Have the Hepplewoods no fortune, then?”

Gwyneth laughed. “Well, they’ve a huge house and a fine, old name,” she said. “But Loughford is such a money pit one wonders if the rents can keep the place roofed.”

Lisette poked at her food, pondering it. “Is that why Lady Hepplewood stays here? Their house is falling to pieces?”

At last Gwyneth looked uncertain. “It hasn’t come to that yet, I don’t think,” she said. “But it’s a drafty old place. Still, Diana says Loughford is lovely.”

“Then I wonder why Lady Hepplewood doesn’t drag Tony back home,” said Lisette, emboldened by Gwyneth’s candor. “He looks thoroughly under her thumb.”

“I think Aunt Hepplewood means to marry Diana off first,” said Gwyneth. “Like me, she’s been on the shelf too long, and I gather there’s no one in Northumberland who’ll do.”

Lisette had been puzzling over something. “But who will be Lady Hepplewood’s companion?”

“Not I,” Gwyneth declared. “But Diana is actually a cousin, not a companion. We grew up together, Anne, Diana, Tony, and I.”

“Diana’s parents are gone?”

“No, her father is Hepplewood’s steward. They have a fine house on the estate. But Diana’s mother died when she was five.”

“We share that, don’t we?” Absently, Lisette toyed with a bit of bacon. “Losing our mothers too soon.”

“I suppose we do.” Gwyneth’s expression softened. “And now Aunt says it’s her duty to find Diana a husband—and if ever a woman was meant to be married, it’s Diana.”

“Well, she did find Diana a husband,” Lisette remarked. “She found your father, Lord Saint-Bryce.”

“And wasn’t that convenient?” Another smile twisted Gwyneth’s mouth. “But as soon as Papa put off his blacks, Diana had to put hers on. And then Papa died. And now Mr. Napier is to marry you. And then
he’ll
likely toss the lot of us out and wash his hands of the misery.”

“Oh, no!” said Lisette. “I am quite sure he wouldn’t want—”

She halted abruptly, realizing she wasn’t at all sure what Napier would want.
Would
he toss them all out? Or would he even bother to turn up at Burlingame again?

It was as if Gwyneth read her mind. “No, you aren’t sure, are you?” she murmured over her teacup. “It’s perfectly all right. We likely deserve it, inbred snobs that we are.”

Lisette wondered if Gwyneth was relieved Diana would not become her stepmother. And if Gwyneth had hated the notion, what about her sister, Anne?

But Anne was married, and her father’s third wife would not have much affected her.

“I wonder if Beatrice knew she was to have a stepmother?” Lisette mused aloud.

“Bea is more shrewd than you might think,” said Gwyneth. “And like a vulture, Aunt Hepplewood moved in when Bea’s mother was on her deathbed, which made her plan rather obvious. But once Papa passed, that was that, and Aunt Hepplewood turned her arrow to—”

Her words jerked to a halt, and at last Gwyneth had the grace to blush.

Lisette smiled and gave a dismissive toss of her hand. “Yes, I know it was hoped Diana might marry Mr. Napier.”

“In Aunt Hepplewood’s defense,” said Gwyneth, “she thought Mr. Napier entirely unattached.”

“And she has been gracious to me,” said Lisette swiftly. “So Beatrice’s mother had no other children. How sad.”

“Poor Julia was like Mamma,” said Gwyneth almost wistfully. “They were not good breeders—and in the end, it killed them.”

“How very tragic,” said Lisette. “Did Julia die in childbed?”

“No, but it left her an invalid,” said Gwyneth. “Bea was a miracle. Julia lost six children before she was born. But Papa and Grandpapa, they were desperate for . . . oh, Lord! How awkward I am today.”

“Desperate for another heir,” Lisette finished. “I know. And I think Mr. Napier would not have minded had they found one, to be honest.”

At that, Gwyneth’s gaze narrowed. “Perhaps, but what of yourself?”

Lisette widened her eyes ingenuously. “Why, I had accepted Mr. Napier’s offer completely unaware,” she said honestly. “Indeed, when he made his proposal to me, I understood him to be the Assistant Police Commissioner, and nothing more.”

Gwyneth cut her a disbelieving gaze. “Well, Nicholas Napier was a wealthy man,” she suggested. “Though how he made his money is anyone’s guess.”

Given Sir Wilfred’s dying words, Lisette was beginning to believe she didn’t have to guess, but held her tongue. “Well, I did not claim to think Mr. Napier poverty stricken,” she said, forcing a light laugh. “I have seen his carriage, his clothes, and that fine house in Eaton Square.”

At that, Gwyneth relented, and relaxed a little into her chair. “Still, you were marrying down,” she said. “Quite far, in fact.”

Lisette simply shrugged, and told the truth. “My father lived a scandalous life and came to a tragic end,” she said. “It alters one’s ideas of propriety, even as it tarnishes one’s prospects. I respected Mr. Napier, and thought him quite good-looking. And so I accepted his proposal.”

“A decision, my dear, which I believe you are now called upon to explain,” said a deep voice from the doorway.

The sound of
my
dear
spoken in that familiar, almost sensuous timbre sent a dangerous warmth down Lisette’s spine—a sensation as unwise as it was unwelcome.

Forcing a bright smile, she turned around in her chair to see Royden Napier blocking the width of the doorway with those impossibly broad shoulders. He wore black again—and a grim expression.

“Good morning, my darling,” she said, rising.

“Have you finished your breakfast?”

“Yes, I hadn’t much appetite.”

Napier held out his hand to her. “Then if you would kindly join me,” he said in his low, rumbling voice, “Lord Duncaster requests the pleasure of our company.”

“Together?” she said uneasily. “The two of us?”

“Forever and ever,” said Napier dryly, “until death do us part.”

It felt like an endless trek back to the east pavilion. Lisette walked alongside Napier through the ostentatious state apartments, neither speaking until they reached the marble colonnade. Today the massive casements had been flung up, opening the long passageway to the rapidly warming day, and the sun slanted in upon the alternating squares of marble giving one the impression it had been dusted with diamonds.

In the middle of the colonnade, Napier stopped abruptly, glancing up and down as if to confirm it was empty. The sardonic humor she’d glimpsed in the dining room had vanished from his eyes—eyes that were a dark, storm-cloud blue today.

“Elizabeth,” he said quietly, “I wish to—”

“Napier,
don’t
.” Wincing, she threw up a hand.

“Don’t what?” He stood rigidly beside her.

“Apologize,” she said, and resumed walking. “Actually, you don’t have to do any of this.”

But he caught her arm in a firm grip, and gently drew her around. “Elizabeth, wait.” His eyes searched her face as one might examine a porcelain teacup, checking for chips and cracks. “What is it you think I’m doing?”

“Being—I don’t know—
kind
to me?” Lisette sighed. “You aren’t kind. And I’m not fragile. In fact, when you dragged me into this mess, Napier, you implied you thought me ruthless.”

“We are all of us fragile,” he said quietly, “in our own way.”

Oddly irritated by his gentleness, Lisette lifted one shoulder. “My own solicitor recently remarked I’d become hardened and cynical,” she said. “And he did not mean it as a compliment. And you—well,
you
think worse of me than that, remember?”

He was still watching her warily. “I hardly know what I think,” he admitted. “Understanding you, I begin to believe, is like grasping quicksilver.”

She shrugged again. “Just understand, Napier, that I’ve never lived a sheltered life—not even
before
Papa died, and certainly not after.”

“What do you mean?”

She shook her head. She really had no wish to begin this conversation. “My father was a charming scoundrel,” she said. “Do you imagine I don’t know that? Or that I did not have some sense of the life he lived? As to my life afterward, the Ashtons were in the newspaper business, and in that, no one stays naïve for long. I understand how the world operates, Napier. I understand how men are.”

His grip on her arm hardened. “If you think that,” he replied, “then you don’t understand me at all.”

“At last, we are agreed on something,” she said setting off again. “Come, let’s not keep Duncaster waiting. He might die of old age before we get there. Then where would we be?”

After an instant’s hesitation, Napier fell into step beside her, his boot heels ringing even harder on the glossy marble. Lisette tried not to grit her teeth. The infernal man could not bear to be crossed—not even when he was being an idiot.

The fleeting softness having left his eyes, Napier again looked remote and intractable today—for a good reason, she feared. Perhaps no one at Burlingame wished him ill, but neither did they welcome him, that much had been made plain to Lisette. Perhaps Duncaster felt the same.

But it likely did not matter to Napier. He doubtless went where and when he pleased, undeterred by opinion.

Lisette cut another surreptitious glance at his tall, rangy form. The man moved with a powerful, loose-limbed grace and looked, more than anyone she’d ever met, utterly at ease with himself. She sensed in him the confidence of a man who knew precisely what he was, and had made of his life precisely what he wished.

For most people this unexpected inheritance would have been an opportune twist of fate. But to Napier, it was just an unwelcome distraction. That much Lisette truly believed, no matter how many incredulous glances people like Gwyneth Tarleton might cast in his direction.

She glanced at him again, and considered what Lord Duncaster might make of his reluctant heir. Lisette saw nothing of which the viscount might disapprove; in fact, quite the opposite.

She had not lied to Gwyneth when she’d called Napier handsome, though he was not conventionally so. He was dressed today as if for riding in a coat she now realized was actually dark charcoal, paired with a plain black stock and tall black boots with breeches. There was nothing of the dandy in him, thank God. Instead he looked every inch a man’s man, with all the virility and lean strength such a phrase suggested
.

On an inward sigh, she thought again of the weight and hardness of his body pressing her down into the softness of his bed; of the almost overwhelming power of him. Her face flooding with heat, Lisette decided some idle chatter was in order.

“Did you hear the prodigal son turned up at breakfast?” she said, dropping her voice companionably. “Apparently he, too, has contrived an engagement without his mother’s blessing.”

“I didn’t require her blasted blessing.”

“Alas for Tony, it seems he did,” she said. “Lady Hepplewood snatched up that wicked black stick of hers and dragged him off for a flogging. So account yourself fortunate. Tea yesterday could have been worse.”