A Lady's Guide to Rakes (21 page)

“Don’t ran from me, Meredith. We belong together and you know it… know it in the very depths of your heart.”

His mouth came down upon hers and igmted the embers of need that she’d managed to bank since the day she left Harford Fell.

She felt his mouth opening hers and the roughness of his budding beard on her face. Alex’s arms rose up around her and pressed her tight against his body.

Her breath caught in her throat, and all at once she realized her hands were beneath his coat, running over the ridged muscles of his chest.

His mouth separated from hers then, leaving her lips tingling and wet, wanting more.

“Marry me. Say you will.”

There was a click followed by a whine as someone opened the French windows. Meredith froze and her eyes met Alex’s stunned gaze.

“Oh dear!” babbled Beth Augustine. “F-forgive me for intruding. Have an ache in my head. Thought some cool air would help.”

Meredith hesitantly turned her head toward the French windows. Beth was purposely averting her gaze, fingering the tight buds of the rosebush nearest the gaping door.

“I just wanted to tell you good eve.”

Meredith narrowed her eyes. The wench had not just stumbled upon them. For heaven’s sake, the door was made of at least twenty lights of glass. She had to have seen them, even in the darkness of the courtyard. Beth had wanted to interrupt.

Meredith raised her chin. “Good eve, Beth. Do forgive me for not rising.”

Beth looked up then. Her eyes rounded, a shape echoed by her mouth. She studied them both briefly; then, as if realizing she had failed in sending them scampering to their feet, she spun around and charged back through the door.

When Meredith looked back at Alexander, she saw that one edge of his lips was pulled higher than the other in a roguish grin. “Now, where did we leave off?”

Meredith pressed a palm to his chest and used it as leverage to stand. “My aunts, or another guest, might come out and find us at any moment. We must go back inside, please.”

Alexander was upon her in an instant. He cupped his hand behind her neck and pulled her mouth to his. “Is that what you really want… to go back inside?”

“No.” Her eyelids felt heavy and she wanted more than anything to lean close and take the kiss she wanted so badly. Instead, she twisted away from his grasp, turned and walked into the house.

———

As the last guest left the house late that evening, Meredith stood with her aunts waving farewell.

Thankfully, it seemed that Beth Augustine had not reported finding Meredith and Alexander in a couple’s embrace in the courtyard. Or, at least, her aunts had had the good grace to refrain from mentioning it.

“Well, I am off to find my pillow,” Aunt Viola announced as she started up the staircase.

“Pillow, bah! I want my bed. My feet haven’t throbbed so badly all month.” Aunt Letitia started to cane her way up the stairs behind her sister, when she paused and looked around at Meredith. “We shall discuss your… progress with Lord Lansing in the morning, shall we?”

Meredith looked up at her aunt and smiled. “Yes, Auntie. Good night.”

What progress had she made, though? The more she tested and studied the rake, the more she seemed to yearn for the man. For certain, she wasn’t thinking as clearly as she normally might. After all, he had turned her to jelly with a duo of fantastic kisses less than an hour before.

Oh! She just had to stop thinking about those kisses. She needed a distraction. Best review her notes. Slowly she walked over to the entry way table and reached around the vase of spring flowers for her book of notes. After all, as any student of the sciences knows, she appreciated the importance of interpreting results in a thorough and unbiased manner.

As her fingers slipped across the polished table, she felt nothing.

A little tremor started in her hands as she whisked the heavy vase into the air. To her horror, she saw nothing more than her own startled expression peering back up at her, blurred and wavering in the glossy cherry wood surface. Plunking the vase back down, she fell to her knees and began scrabbling around the shadows beneath the table.

It wasn’t there.

The book where she’d recorded all of her notes for over two years, all of her experiments—all of her observations of London’s rakes—was gone!

Do not he fooled by pristine starched neckcloths and gloves. A man who wishes to dance with a lady truly wishes to bed her.

By eight o’clock the next morn, Arthur Chillton had heard the most disturbing news about Miss Meredith Merri-weather. She had replaced him with another.

He’d been standing at the counter in Fortnum & Mason, waiting to pay for a bag of coffee. It was a purchase he was loath to make.

Arthur had flushed each measure of grounds with boiling water at least six times over the past weeks, but now his morning cup resembled dishwater more than a dark brew. Time to replenish.

He’d been trying to decide between the black glossy beans, which might result in a richer flavor—therefore lending itself to more uses—and the nut-colored coffee, which mightn’t last nearly as long, but was twenty pence cheaper.

He’d just made up his mind to go with the nut-hued beans, deciding he could make do with lighter coffee because… well, twenty pence was twenty pence, after all. Right then, a curly-haired woman with a bright green feathered hat entered the establishment.

As he pushed a coin forward to the shopkeeper, he heard something that snared his attention.

“I tell you, Mrs. Augustine was at the Feathertons’ musicale. She told me everything. Saw it all for herself,” the woman in the frivolous hat was telling the woman at her side, a rounder lady a good ten years her senior. “Miss Merriweather, the little hoyden, has. somehow—oh, I do not know how, so do not even ask—snared Lord Lansing’s heartstrings.”

“What? You cannot be right. She was all but ruined just two years past.” The older woman was clearly aghast, or at least making a good show of it. “Certainly the heir to an earldom could do far better for himself. Why, the man hails from one of the oldest families in the realm.”

“Be that as it may, she has done it. The rumble is, she had set her cap for a merchant of some sort, but he pushed her aside. It was not the first time she’d been summarily jilted, and, I daresay, she must have decided it would be the last time ever. Well, Mrs. Augustine stumbled upon the lord and Miss Merriweather canoodling in the Feathertons’ courtyard—during her great-aunts’ musicale, no less!”

Hearing this flustered Arthur Chillton so deeply that he snatched up the cotton bag of coffee beans and charged out of Fortnum & Mason, completely forgetting the tuppence in change he was due.

How could this be, he wondered as he set off walking the ten or so blocks back to Russell Square.

Yes, it was true he hadn’t actually spoken to Miss Merriweather herself since the incident at Tattersalls, but he was only trying to teach her a lesson. Surely she could understand that. Any woman worthy of being his wife could not conduct herself in such an outrageous fashion.

He had even planned to speak with her again on the first of next week, thinking that a sennight of silence was appropriate, given the circumstances.

In no way had he intended to jilt her. He had been quite clear about his wishes with her aunts Wednesday past. At least, he thought he had.

Arthur Chillton clenched his fist as he stalked down the flagstone walkway, but then straightened his fingers again, thinking better of it. The day was warm, after all, and he did not wish to soil his gloves with perspiration.

He had to acknowledge that this bit of gossip was quite bothersome, indeed. He needed Miss Merriweather— there was no way around it. Needed her name and Society connections for business. He had been darned lucky to find her, or so his mother oft said. How many nearly ruined, available debutantes did one of his class come across in a lifetime, anyway?

And now Lansing was sniffing around, was he?

Well, the rake wasn’t going to win Miss Merriweather from him.

Arthur just had to find a way to cut in on Lansing’s waltz. And, not being as skilled in turning the ladies’ heads as his lordship, he had to remember that it might take a little bit of time.

Perhaps the Featherton ladies would assist him. They were quite an amiable pair, those two. And he knew they liked him. Why else would they so eagerly agree to become Hannah’s duennas next season?

Yes, he would ask them for their assistance in this matter as soon as he was able.

Miss Merriweather would become Mrs. Arthur Chillton.

He smiled then as he imagined slipping his mother’s ring over Miss Merriweather’s knuckle, with a shocked Lord Lansing looking on.

In fact, he so enjoyed the lift the musing gave him that he held it in his mind slightly longer than he should have. For he became so consumed with this rousing thought, he walked blindly out into the road.

He never heard the jingling of bridles as horses bore down upon him.

In fact, he never saw what hit him at all.

———

Around that same time, Meredith and the Featherton house staff had searched every nook, cupboard, loose floorboard and mouse hole for the missing book of notes.

“A guest from the musicale stole it.” Meredith folded her arms over her chest and plopped down on the settee next to Aunt Viola, whose full skirt puffed up like a great pumpkin before slowly beginning to deflate.

“
Stole
is a very strong word, dear,” Aunt Letitia, who was entering through the parlor, reminded her.

“I daresay it is the perfect word,” Meredith replied. “When I could not find the book last eve, I still held out hope that one of the staff might have stumbled upon it and put it away. And yet, Mr. Edgar has interviewed every member of the staff, including those brought in to assist with the musicale.”

Worry was making Meredith breathless. “We’ve searched the house four times, from top to bottom. The book has been stolen. There is no other explanation.”

“Who would do such a thing?” Aunt Viola’s wide, innocent eyes blinked across at Meredith.

“Beth Augustine, that’s who.” Meredith narrowed her eyes as she remembered Beth standing in the foyer, waiting for her as she descended the stairtreads and slipped her book of notes onto the table. “She was the only guest still in the foyer when I hid the book.”

“Why would Mrs. Augustine do such a thing, dear?” Aunt Letitia spread her feet and leaned on her cane, then tipped herself back into the wingchair. The chair’s front feet bucked in the air for an instant before slamming loudly down to rest on the wooden floor again.

Meredith shook her head. “I’ve given up asking why Beth does anything. It’s as though she has a vendetta and is bent on seeing me run out of Town.”

“No, dear. If Mrs. Augustine has your book, I am sure she picked it up by mistake.” Aunt Viola rose and walked over to the rosewood secretary and opened the drop front.

She glanced back at Meredith briefly, then very purposely pulled out a card, opened the silver inkwell and dipped a nib into it. “I shall send over a card to let her know the book is missing. If she has it, she will be under the impression that we know it is in her possession and will no doubt return it promptly.”

Meredith coughed her doubt. “Or she will see it published in the
London Times.
“

Aunt Letitia chuckled at that. “My gel, you do have quite the imagination.” Then she grew quiet and thoughtful. “Though… you did mean to see the book published.”

“Not in the
London Times!
It was meant to be a helpful guidebook for young ladies.” She lowered her head then.

“Besides, after my latest… experiments, I am beginning to wonder if I was right, after all.”

Aunt Viola set her card on the flat of the desk and turned around. “Right about what, dear?”

Meredith slowly raised her head and met her aunt’s gaze. “Maybe… just maybe, ‘once a rake, always a rake’ is not quite true. Perhaps… they can reform.”

Aunt Viola’s gaze crossed the room to where her sister reclined near the hearth.

Had Meredith not followed the path of her aunt’s gaze, she might have missed the flash of excitement that blinked for an instant on the elderly sisters’ faces.

———

Alexander was dressed, but he lay atop his bed, staring at the drape of the velvet draperies. His arms were propped behind his head when One entered his chamber with a silver tray of tea, toasted bread with butter and a mound of sliced apples.

“There ye are, my lord. I thought I heard ye come in, a few minutes ago.”

“Aye, I was out for a ride earlier. Made some calls. Nothing like cool morning air to revive a man’s sense, eh?”

One nodded, then grimaced when he tripped over something lying on the floor at the foot of the bed. Murmuring something unintelligible, he lifted Alexander’s discarded boots and begradgingly set them beside the door for cleaning.

“I would have come down, One. I was going to wash up first.” Even as he said this, Alexander was sliding up in his bed and allowing One to prop pillows behind him.

“Aye, my lord. Arms”

Alexander raised his elbows and One flipped open a crisply starched serviette and spread it across his lap. “I say, has the post arrived?”

One retrieved three missives from the, glistening silver tray and settled them into Alexander’s open hand before the last syllable of “arrived” had tumbled from his lips.

“Very good.” Alexander eyed the missive with the heavy green seal—which looked very important, indeed—broke the wafer open and unfolded the thick vellum.

Several darkly inked words leaped out at him:
The Duke and Duchess of Euston
—two of the most boring people in all of England—
request the honor of your presence, on the occasion of a ball.
Could this invitation be any worse? No. Impossible. The rest of the wordy invitation was just broth in which to float the meat..

Alexander dropped the vellum, flicking his fingers as if the invitation were a bit sticky. “One, would you fetch some paper and ink, my good fellow?” Alexander took a quick bite of toasted bread, then washed it down with a swig of tea. “I want to send a note round to the Featherton house right away. No doubt, with their long friendship with the duchess, they too have received an invitation.”