A Scandalous Deception (2 page)

Lissy glanced in the general direction
Haversham had indicated and suppressed a groan when she spotted
Lord Richard Shelley approaching her.

“I’ll give Carraway this. He’s more
interesting than
him
,” the marquess said under his breath,
just loud enough for Lissy to hear.

She looked up at the scoundrel beside her and
said, “I’m not certain you’re the best judge for what constitutes
an interesting gentleman, my lord.”

“My dear Lady Felicity—” he smirked “—I am
more qualified than most to make such assessments.”

“Lady Felicity,” Lord Richard began softly
once he reached her. “I had hoped I might persuade you to stand up
with me for the next set.”

Lissy smiled, as warmly as she was able, at
the far-from-interesting gentleman before her. “Thank you, my lord,
but I’m not dancing this evening. I am a bit parched however, if
you’d like to bring me some punch.”

A bit crestfallen, Lord Richard nodded and
then started off for the refreshment table.

Haversham slid so close to Lissy she could
actually feel him chuckle beside her. “I think you wounded that
poor man’s heart.”

“I’m certain he’ll survive.”

“Heartless wench. I’m liking you better and
better.”

“Good God!” Phineas Granard, Viscount
Carraway, couldn’t quite see straight as the edges of his vision
were tinged slightly red.

“Beg your pardon, Carraway?” Lord Liverpool
replied, but Fin barely heard the Prime Minister.

Honestly, with the ringing in his hears, he
couldn’t even hear himself think. What the devil was Lissy doing?
Had she lost her fool mind? Was she actually flirting with the
Marquess of Haversham?

Fin gritted his teeth. Keeping that chit out
of trouble was a never-ending chore. He cursed Lucas Beckford for
holing himself up in Derbyshire. The blasted man should be here
keeping an eye on Lissy, not playing nursemaid to Juliet. All
right, so the man’s wife
was
expecting, Fin begrudgingly
acknowledged. Beckford did have a perfectly reasonable excuse not
to be in Town for the season, but why the devil he and Juliet had
allowed Lissy to stay in London alone made no sense at all. They
knew what a flighty little thing she was! And now she was cavorting
with Haversham, of all the damned people in Town.

Truthfully, Lissy probably didn’t know how
dangerous the marquess was. Very few ladies her age did, but she
was most definitely aware Haversham possessed a blackened
reputation. Everyone was aware of that. Good God, Georgie would
roll over in her grave if she knew the company her little sister
was keeping this evening.

Georgie
.

Fin took a steadying breath. One would have
thought that sometime within the last three years, he’d have gotten
over her, that the pain of losing her would have dulled a bit, that
he’d have made a step or two towards getting on with his life. But
he hadn’t. Fin wasn’t certain how to move forward or if he even
wanted to. Georgie had been everything to him. She was perfect.
Perfect for him. He could search the world over a hundred times and
he’d never find a woman like her in his lifetime.

Fin’s gaze stayed on Lissy, her flaxen curls
bobbing up and down as she laughed at something her scurrilous
companion had said. How the devil she and Georgie were sired by the
same man was a complete mystery. The two of them must have
inherited the traits from their respective mothers. That was the
only answer. They didn’t think the same, behave the same or even
look the same. Yet, Georgie had fretted over all of her younger
siblings, more like a mother than a sister. If she were still here,
she would have been more than upset by Lissy’s sudden friendship
with Haversham.

“I say, Carraway,” Lord Liverpool’s voice
pushed through the deafening roar in Fin’s ears. “Are you all
right?”

Fin shook his head, not wanting to go into
the particulars, but he didn’t really have a choice. “It looks like
my nephew’s sister is in over her head, is all.”

Lord Liverpool turned his attention towards
Lissy and Haversham across the room. “Prestwick’s sister?”

Fin nodded. “I am sorry, sir. I’d love to
continue this conversation, but I really—”

“I completely understand, Carraway. I have
female relations my own.”

Lissy wasn’t really his relation, but there
was no point in wasting time explaining the intricacies of his
connection to the chit. Not when she was looking up at Haversham as
though he’d personally hung the moon in the sky. “Thank you. I’ll
see you soon, sir.”

Fin started across the ballroom, his temper
rising with each step. Foolish girl. What in the world was Lissy
thinking? Was she even thinking at all, that was a better question!
Spending time in Haversham’s company could ruin nearly any girl’s
reputation. Just because she was a widow didn’t mean she didn’t
have her good name to protect.

“Lissy,” he grumbled in way of greeting when
he reached her. “What exactly do you think you’re doing?”

“Carraway.” Haversham nodded.

Fin speared the malevolent marquess with a
look that said better than words ever could what the man could go
do with himself, then he turned his attention back to Lissy, whose
blue eyes flashed with something Fin couldn’t quite identify.
Annoyance, humor, mischievousness. A combination of the three,
perhaps.

“Uncle Fin.” She smiled innocently, though
she knew full well he hated it when she called him that.

“I’m not your uncle,” he said, and if he had
a farthing for every time he’d had to utter those words to her…

“You can call
me
Uncle Marc, if you’d
like,” Haversham tossed in. The suggestive tone to the man’s voice
grated Fin’s nerves like an electric jolt to his nether
regions.

“She’ll call you no such thing,” Fin growled.
He narrowed his eyes on the marquess. “In fact, she shouldn’t even
be seen in your presence.” Then he gestured towards the main
entrance with his head. “So why don’t you take your leave,
Haversham?”

“Phineas Samuel Benedict Granard!” Lissy
hissed.

Fin’s arrogant brown gaze shifted from
Haversham to Lissy. “Felicity Corinna St. Claire Pierce,” he
countered.

Oh! If they weren’t in Lady Astwick’s
ballroom, she’d slug him in the chest. How dare he march across the
room and behave like an angry guardian? She hadn’t sought out
Haversham’s company, but even if she had, it was none of Fin’s
concern. He had no say in regards to which friends she could have,
what she did with her time, or how she chose to live her life, for
that matter. Controlling, overbearing, insufferable, starched
stickler.

Lissy folded her arms across her chest. “I
will thank you not to take that tone with me.”

A muscle twitched in Fin’s jaw. He grabbed
her elbow in his hand and pulled her closer to him. “Come with me,”
he growled, and then towed her away from Haversham and towards the
main entrance.

“Fin!” she complained once they reached the
corridor. “What in the world do you think you’re doing?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” he
grumbled, his eyes scanning the hallway as though looking for a
safe place to talk. He started for an open doorway and pulled Lissy
along beside him.

They entered a small parlor, which was
thankfully uninhabited, and Fin shut the door behind them. Good
heavens! He’d made much more of a scene dragging her from Lady
Astwick’s ballroom than Lissy had done by simply talking to Lord
Haversham.

“If this is how you behave in society,” she
began, her ire building, “then it’s a very good thing you never
come out in it.”

Fin’s displeasure showed on his face, and he
pointed in the general direction of the ballroom. “That man is a
wholly unacceptable companion.”

“One might say the same thing about
Liverpool,” she countered. “But I didn’t stomp across the ballroom,
behave boorishly, and yank
you
into a secluded parlor over
it.”

Fin’s mouth fell open as though he couldn’t
believe she’d say such a silly thing. And Lissy was certain that
was the precise thought going through his mind. He’d always thought
her silly, incapable of making reasonable decisions on her own.
Well, she wasn’t a child, and hadn’t been for quite a while.

“That is hardly the same thing, and you know
it,” he finally said.

Stubbornly, Lissy shook her head, even if no
one in their right mind would compare the Prime Minister with the
notorious marquess. “What I know, Fin, is that you have embarrassed
me to no end. I cannot believe you just dragged me from that room
in front of everyone as though I was an errant child in need of a
scolding.”

“If Georgie was here—“

“Georgie’s
not
here. She’s gone,” she
interrupted him. And for the first time since her sister’s death,
she felt no guilt in saying so. No one could live up to Georgie’s
expectations, and Lissy refused to let Fin throw Georgie’s would-be
displeasure at her any longer. “And it’s well past the time you
should have started living your own life and stopped living
hers.”

The moment those last words were out of her
mouth, Lissy wished she could call them back. The flash of pain
that splashed across Fin’s face tore at her heart. He loved
Georgie, but only one of them had died all those years ago. If they
were to talk about what Georgie would or wouldn’t want, Lissy was
more than certain that her oldest sister wouldn’t want Fin to spend
the remainder of his days pining away after her, mourning a future
that was lost forever.

Lissy reached out a tentative hand, touching
Fin’s wrist. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“Don’t you ever feel that way?” His dark eyes
speared her. “Don’t you ever lament the loss of Captain Pierce?
Don’t you wonder what your own life would be like if he’d
lived?”

Only on the occasions when she suffered from
nightmares. Lissy swallowed down the bile that rose up in her
throat at the thought of her own husband. “I didn’t know him as
long as you knew Georgie,” she hedged her answer.

Even still, her words were the truth. Had she
known Aaron better than she had, Lissy would have never married the
oh-too-dashing captain. Had she known the things Aaron was capable
of, Lissy would have bolted as far away from the man as possible
upon meeting him. In her darker moments, she wished she’d never met
Aaron. If he’d never entered her life, she could actually enjoy a
future now. But he had entered her life, and there wasn’t a blasted
thing Lissy could do about that. The past, as well as her future,
was firmly etched in stone.

Though an actual future was not a possibility
for Lissy, that didn’t have to be the case for Fin. His stodginess
aside, he was a delightful man. Kind, most of the time. Caring,
even. If Aaron had been more like Fin…

“But you must have loved him, “ Fin pressed.
“Georgie showed me the letter you wrote.”

The letter she’d sent from Boston. The letter
she’d written on the day of her marriage before she realized the
sort of man Aaron truly was. She hadn’t had the heart to write
again, she couldn’t find the words to tell either of her sisters
what a colossal mistake she had made. There was nothing either of
them could do to rescue her from her impetuous foolishness, after
all.

“I’d rather not talk about it, Fin,” she said
quietly. And she could go the rest of her life without talking
about it, without ever thinking about it…

“You
never
want to talk about it,” he
interrupted her thoughts. “I’ve never seen you mourn, I’ve never
seen—”

“No!” she blurted out, halting him
mid-sentence. Lissy pushed past the panic that seized her heart and
the shortness of her breath. She hated discussing Aaron. She hated
it with every fiber of her being, and had ever since she’d returned
to England. Lissy shook her head, hoping against hope that he’d
stop his inquisition. “I won’t live the rest of my life mourning
his loss, Fin. I just won’t. I’d rather look forward than back. And
you should do the same.” There! Perhaps now he’d leave the topic
alone for a while.