A Pair of Rogues (11 page)

Robert had no notion of the number of occasions Ned had been obliged to prevent an incident which would have ruined his sister. Concerned as Robert was by her “ill-considered judgment,” he seemed to have no idea that the girl was not what she appeared. Beneath that crown of angel’s hair and behind those clear, blue eyes churned the unrepentant mind of hoyden. Christina seemed determined to flaunt society’s norms, as if she had a wish to dispense with the whole rigid mess.

In spite of the dozens of eligible bachelors Robert had tried to put in her way, Christina persisted in being most attracted to the wastrels who made a practice of hanging about heiresses, those men who made it a profession to be oily. She had an uncanny talent for attracting them to her side. While most of these men would have taken a shot at their prospects with her anyway, they had received nothing but encouragement from Christina herself. Ned couldn’t decide whether she truly believed their lies or if she took a perverse satisfaction from putting herself at risk. Whatever the case, she actually seemed pleased when one of her dancing partners turned out to be a rake.

Ned had been forced to use all his diplomatic skills to avoid another meeting, like the one with Grisham in which Ned had nearly lost a leg. They had faced each other on the heath in the hour of a cold, dreary dawn. Ned’s head had been aching from Christina’s antics the night before, and he had barely paid his adversary any mind.

Fortunately, in trying to cripple rather than kill him, Grisham had chosen a narrow target —Ned’s knee. The bullet had barely grazed Ned’s thigh. Ned, who knew he had been in the wrong, had aimed for the other man’s right arm in the hope of spoiling his shot. Adept at the duello, Ned had often used this technique.

His unexpected miss had driven home the possibility that he might have died on the field. Grisham and he had both ridden away from the incident, but Ned had no particular wish to repeat the events of that morning.

If he had been killed, he’d wondered later, who would have made sure that Christina did not do something foolish to ruin herself that night?

Angry with Christina for getting him into such a dangerous situation, he had even tried to think of a worthy husband for her. Ned had found, however, that he knew few worthy men. If a candidate did suggest himself, Ned soon found an irrefutable reason for rejecting him. Either the prospect would have some failing no sister of Robert’s should have to accept or else Ned would decide the man was simply too weak to govern her as he should.

And throughout all these travails, Ned had refrained from telling Robert just how serious the girl’s antics had become. He knew that Robert’s reaction would be extreme, possibly cruel. He would undoubtedly pack Christina off to live with the Dowager again, which was a fate Ned would not wish on anyone.

He might have confided his private concerns to Louisa, but she seemed to dote on her sister so much, Ned did not want to be the one to inform her what a graceless scamp Christina was. He knew too well how painful rejection by a near relation could be.

In that moment, he entered the withdrawing room where the family was greeting their guests and put his thoughts aside.

“Dear, dear Ned.”

As she spied him and held out her hands, Louisa’s warm, welcoming voice acted like a balm.

Ned had always envied Robert that warmth. Sometimes, when he allowed himself to think of such things, he wondered what it would be like to have the force of a woman’s love directed solely at him. Then, he always reminded himself that since he was not in love with any woman, he would surely tire of a cloying attention.

He had never kept a mistress for that reason, preferring to amuse himself with less onerous flings. But, tonight, he found himself wondering about a constant love again.

“Louisa.” Ned kissed her hand and held onto it a second longer than was proper merely to annoy Robert who was standing at her side. Then he glanced at Christina, who had been greeting another guest as Ned had entered and only now looked up.

Expecting to be met with her usual challenging gaze, he had intended to find some way to tease her. He’d been searching for a probing phrase to rouse her ire. But he was taken aback and then dismayed to see that dark circles had formed under her eyes. Christina’s fair coloring gave away most of her feelings. At the moment, her face had the pale cast of sheepskin, with its delicate veins and brittle texture exposed to the light. This dangerous game she had been playing seemed to have done her more harm than he’d thought.

Her cheeks had none of their usual bloom, no matter how perfectly the light blue of her dress enhanced her eyes and the soft, white glow of her pearls matched the color of her breast. Her cheer seemed listless and forced.

She rallied, though, as soon as she saw him. Her back became straighter, and she lifted her chin before acknowledging his bow with a tantalizing smile. Alert to her tricks, Ned wondered what thought could be behind her angled glance and curving lips. Some deviltry, he was certain. But what would it be tonight?

Louisa’s dinner party consisted of several men in the government with Robert, along with Louisa’s particular set of friends. Normally, Ned would not have made one of this company, but he assumed his status as Robert Edward’s godfather had given him a permanent legitimacy in this house. At he thought of Little Ned now, he wished he could retire to watch the baby struggle to roll himself heels over head.

The episode with Christina in the nursery had changed the aspect of that haven, however. Ned could not step into it without wondering if she might appear.

She had not given away his secret. For that, he was grateful.

The company soon gathered for dinner around a long mahogany table, lighted by a pair of magnificent chandeliers and laid with gilt-rimmed porcelain. As the footman guided Ned to his place near the center of one long side, he was astonished to find Christina already seated to the right of his chair.

Startled by this arrangement, he was unprepared to school his features. His reaction astonished him, as his pulse gave a leap, and a smile welled up from deep inside.

Christina’s expression, which had been composed, underwent a subtle change, as if a shy, little flame inside her had been lit.

Ned quickly recovered his sangfroid and accepted the footman’s help with his chair. His pulse, however, still raced. It must be due to the game they’d been playing, he decided. There was a certain thrill, a sort of heightened chase, in his intercourse with Christina. Nothing so risky as an affair, of course, but there had been an element of intrigue in the way they had managed to hide their particular breed of intimacy from everyone. In front of Robert, and now surrounded by his guests, they would have to play the part of polite acquaintances, when in truth, little between them had been polite.

What the assembled company would think if they knew the sort of conversations he had enjoyed with Christina, Ned could only imagine. They would be shocked, that was certain. He could only assume it was this latent shock, threatening to wake at the slightest slip of a tongue, that gave such spice to all their dealings.

Surely, without this sport, he would sooner have been bored by the sight of a girl.

Ned ignored the niggling feeling that something in this diagnosis was not right, as he lowered his voice to speak. “My dear Lady Christina, how delightful to have your company at dinner.”

“Thank you, my lord. Does the arrangement astonish you as much as it does me?”

“Not at all,” Ned said.

Although it did. Now that he thought of it, he could not imagine what had got into Robert. A rise in the voices of the other guests allowed him to add for her benefit alone, “Your brother has come to regard me as your guardian angel, I believe. But even Robert has no idea of the truth. I daresay if he did, he would pack you back to Bath at once.”

“You will not tell him, however.”

“If I were you, I should not be so certain. Come to think of it, you would probably benefit from more schooling. Tell me, did you listen to anything your masters told you?”

“Certainly. My music master thought I had the best ear for music he had ever seen.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. He played me love songs on the pianoforte. Unfortunately, this gave me little time on the instrument myself.”

Ned gave a choke, before Christina’s attention was begged by Lord Albemarle on her right. Ned found himself forced to entertain the Duchess of Gant on his left.

The Duchess longed to discuss Ned’s ancestry, which somewhere in the seventeenth century contained a relative of her own. Ned was only saved from this lengthy chronicling whenever Louisa decided it was time to entertain the gentleman on her right. Unfortunately, her most loquacious guest was to her left, which kept everyone’s heads tilted in that direction.

Dinner conversation proceeded in this unequal fashion: long tastes of a drab sort of course followed by short, spicy tidbits of dessert.

Lord Albemarle was young, but a gloomy kind of peer. A poet, with a philanthropist’s heart, he and Louisa had been involved in several of the same causes—a virtue Christina tried to appreciate as she listened to him agonizing over the dismal conditions to be found in burgeoning cities like Leeds and Manchester.

Knowing nothing of those towns herself and incapable of doing anything to relieve them, Christina quickly found her tolerance for pity being sadly overwhelmed. The relief she found, when occasionally she was able to turn towards Ned, made it hard to conceal her delight at the sight of his teasing eyes.

Under the cover of clinking spoons and clattering china, Ned expressed his regret that her Grace of Gant could not have been seated next to Lord Buffington, “for they would have found so much to go on together about.”

His voice was so low, Christina was obliged to lean his way to hear. As their shoulders touched, for the space of a tiny moment, she felt as if there were no one in the room but themselves.

“He is quite devoted to family trees, is he not?” Ned continued, forgetting to eat his trifle as he scanned the room. “But I do not see him. Was Buffington not invited?”

“Oh, yes, he was,” Christina replied with a conspiratorial grin, “but I am afraid Lord Buffington has lost interest in blending our two distinguished families, and since he’s as rich as Croesus, he can afford to turn up his nose at my attractive dowry. From what Robert tells me, he was rather alarmed to detect a sign of high spirits in me. He fears that too much spirit in a female is evidence of a bad strain in the line.”

“Fool.”

Ned’s simple response, uttered halfway between anger and contempt, provoked a surge in Christina’s heart. The feeling was so acute and unexpected, she was at pains to hide the tears that sprang into her eyes.

When Robert had reported Buffington’s remark, he had clearly taken the gentleman’s side and had expressed his hope that Christina would learn from this rejection what she must do to improve her deportment, if she wanted to catch a prize like Buffington.

Ned’s unequivocal opinion seemed a confirmation of her rights, even a tacit approval of who she was. No one but Louisa had ever offered her such a gift, and Louisa did not really know her.

But Ned did. Or, at least, he was privy to the worst of her actions. As a rake, she supposed, he could not truly be shocked by anything she’d done. The only trouble was she had not been happy with her actions of late. Not that she had often been delighted with herself, outside the occasional burst of triumph at besting an adversary and the few precious times she had put Robert Edward to sleep.

But, for the most part, since coming to London she had felt out of control, as if she were riding downhill on a runaway sleigh, grasping hard to the seat to stay on, but certain of plunging off a cliff.

“Don’t let that pompous windbag cast you down.” Ned’s gaze moved swiftly to her face and then away. They were speaking softly so that no one at the table could overhear.

Starting, Christina realized he must have noticed her tears. For the moment, his hard, teasing look was gone, and she caught a glimpse of the boy who had comforted her so long ago.

Then, he spoiled the moment by saying, with an irritable jerk of his head, “There are far worthier gentlemen who will relish your high spirits. I am sure you will find happiness with one of them.”

“Thank you, my lord.” Christina did her best to hide her sharp disappointment. So, Ned, like Robert, thought she ought to find a worthy gentleman to marry, did he? Well, she would soon disabuse him of that notion.

“You are too kind, my lord. However, I find that unworthy gentlemen are generally more to my taste.”

Ned’s brows snapped together in a frown. “You are not still encouraging that fortune-hunter Levington, are you?”

“Why not? I have a fortune of my own.”

“Which shall be eaten up before you see twenty-five if Levington ever gets his hands upon it.”

“Really? But how can one be certain? Do you not think we should give Lord Levington the benefit of the doubt? He seems quite devoted to me, so perhaps he would turn over a new leaf. And as boring as that seems, it would probably be the best thing for the children.”

“Children? What children?” Ned had blanched.

“My lord, you will surely make me blush if you ask me to explain the inevitable consequences of marriage.”

“Christina, I’m warning you . . . .”

“Now,” she said delightedly, “you are sounding just like Robert, when I had thought you a rogue. Amazing how age can turn even the most dangerous men into models of propriety. I wonder if Levington will turn respectable when he is one and thirty?”

“He is six and thirty now.” Ned spoke between clenched teeth. “And getting desperate, I see, if he is bothering to lie about his age.”

Christina hid the sudden urge to giggle at the sight of his tightly controlled fury. “Is he truly?” was all she said. “Well, I have always loved an older man.”

“Always?” Ned’s tone expressed his incredulity. “Coming it much too brown, my dear. You’ve never been in love or my name is Buffington. Nor can you convince me that Levington has won your heart.”