Bridal Favors (6 page)

“Well,” she said bracingly, though whom she meant to be braced was somewhat in question. “Until next month, then. Thank you.”

He looked down at her outstretched hand and smiled. He took hold of it but instead of shaking it, he turned it over, lifted it to his mouth, and pressed his lips to her palm. A little shiver raced down her spine, turning into a shudder by the time it found its way to her legs.

He released her hand. It hung for a full three seconds between them before she realized it and thrust it behind her. His expression was creamy with self-satisfaction. “Sorry about that. Reformed though I am, old habits die hard.”

He reached out again and she jumped back. He grinned, stretching his arm past her, and pushed open the door. He stepped back. “Until later.”

Beverly was already on his hands and knees, cleaning up the broken glass, when Justin returned to the library.

“The girl ought to be doing this,” he pronounced gloomily. As a confirmed misogynist, he considered it his special calling to point out the myriad unpleasantnesses supplied by the fairer sex, and he did so at length and in great detail. The only woman he had ever liked—and “like” did not seem an appropriate term for the regard with which he exalted her memory—was Justin’s maternal grandmother.

“It wasn’t a girl,” Justin said. “It was a woman.”

“Ah, no wonder she was able to cause so much mischief in such short order. She’s had practice.” Beverly paused in collecting shards from the Oriental carpet. “But why, might one ask, does it appear to please you that she’s been wreaking havoc on the population for a longer rather than shorter period?”

Justin’s usually candid gaze slipped away with a degree too much nonchalance. Beverly, who, nearly fifteen years ago, had been charged by Justin’s grandmother—who loved her grandson as much as her husband despised him—with seeing to his well-being, felt his interest quicken.

For all those years he had taken that charge most seriously. It had led him to a brief stint in the army as Justin’s batman, and then into his current interesting profession.

“Sir?”

Justin fidgeted, and now Beverly’s interest scaled quickly to all-out concern.

“Well, blast it all, Beverly, one doesn’t like to think one is stirred by a young girl in one’s arms. It’s perverse! So, you can imagine my relief when I discovered that my, er, senses were reacting perfectly naturally to a perfectly standard—no, no, there was nothing
standard
about her. Acceptable? Yes,
acceptable
—set of stimuli.” He smiled.

Beverly’s faced blanched with horror. “Sir, you’re not . . . ?”

He had no idea how Justin knew what he’d been about to say, but Justin waved his hand airily. “Now, Beverly, don’t go haring after some ridiculous notion. There’s a great deal of difference between wanting and winning. Added to which, I haven’t the time, the inclination, or a hope in hell of courting such a prickly creature. So, there it is.”

He smiled. “I shall be out for the rest of the day. And, ah, thank you, Beverly. This little chat has quite cleared my thoughts,” he said and was gone.

Beverly stared after him. For fifteen years, he’d watched various women from various social, economic, and chronological classes angle for Justin’s attention. Not one of them had succeeded. Oh, the boy wasn’t a saint by any means, but he’d never been truly smitten, which had been fine with Beverly.

But lately, Beverly had begun to wonder if perhaps his promise to see to Justin’s well-being might not extend beyond simple physical consideration. As easy as Justin was with his own company, as seemingly cavalier and cheerful in society, more and more often of late Beverly was aware of Justin’s isolation.

There was only one cure for the sort of loneliness a man feels: a son.

Unfortunately, producing one necessitated a certain close association with the manufacturing element.

Whatever else Justin Powell’s kiss did, it banished any doubts Evelyn had as to whether or not Justin Powell was a bona fide wolf. Dazed, she limped to the end of the alley. The hansom was waiting just as they’d arranged, Merry’s fluffed red hair filling the small side window as she pressed her nose to the pane.

As soon as Evelyn reached the door, it swung open, and a hand reached out and seized her and hauled her into the carriage. Once inside, Merry stared at her shredded knickers and undone hair. Before Evelyn realized what was happening, the Frenchwoman had pulled Evelyn into a fierce embrace, and was smothering her face in her ample bosom.

“
Mon Dieu!
My poor little bird! You have been defiled! The filth. The bastard! I kill him!” she moaned, rocking back and forth. It took a minute, but Evelyn finally managed to escape. Merry was so . . .
French
.

“Stop this at once, Merry,” she said severely, trying to straighten the wire bow of her glasses, which Merry, in her enthusiastic portrayal of Outraged Womanhood, had bent. “You’ve entirely misread the situation. Everything went perfectly.”

Chapter 4

BY LATE AFTERNOON, the sun began to dissolve as a murky coolness replaced the day’s bracing clarity. Families picnicking by the Thames gathered up their blankets and baskets and hailed cabs to take them home, leaving behind only a few of the cheerful crowd that had taken advantage of the rare March weather.

A rising fog coalesced above the river, little filigrees threading up along the embankments. Justin, strolling along the nearly deserted promenade, stopped at a bench near Tower Bridge and took a seat. Above him cartwheeled seabirds, disappearing and appearing into the mist.

He stretched his arm along the back of the bench and watched a reedy young man in a seersucker coat stroll by with his lady friend, a rosy-cheeked shop girl who’d forgotten to snip the tag off of her readymade coat. On the river below, a punt glided by. And then, as a church clock struck the seventh hour, a hale, middle-aged man in a dark frock coat and top hat appeared, ambling along, swinging a silver-headed cane. He came even with Justin and paused, turning to look out over the river.

“I know there’s those who find the fog noxious and depressing, but what would London be without one of her famous pea-soupers?” he asked.

“A good sight drier, I should imagine,” Justin replied.

The man smiled without turning. “Ah, Justin, ever the maudlin sentimentalist, I see.”

“Cursed with a soft heart,” Justin agreed.

“Soft as steel,” the gentleman murmured. He shook his head and turned around. “Your day will come, m’boy. I only hope I live to see it.”

“Me, too,” Justin answered with a cheeky grin. “Have a seat, Bernard, you’re putting a crick in my neck, forcing me to look up this way.”

“Only way I will get you to look up to me, I suspect. And thus well worth the trouble,” Bernard replied but nonetheless lowered himself down beside Justin. “Well, Jus, here I am. Now, why did you ask for this meeting?”

“I’ve a plan that might solve some of the problems you presented regarding that little matter of yours.”

“Oh?”

“A simple plan,” Justin leaned sideways and whispered, “but very, very cunning.”

“Very dramatic.” Bernard applauded with the tips of his fingers. “I know there’s scant hope of your listening to me, but could you kindly refrain from treating our work as if it were some schoolboys’ game?”

“As you say,” Justin replied, “scant hope. Oh, come, Bernard, don’t look so disapproving. It
is
a game. And I’m serious enough when the situation warrants—which this most decidedly does not. It’s a simple drop-and-catch on home turf. What could be less perilous?”

When Bernard only frowned, Justin continued. “The gravest danger anyone faces is exposure. And, by the by, that ‘anyone’ is me. But what of it?”

“Hm.” Bernard removed his top hat and set it carefully beside him.

“My sentiments exactly,” Justin responded pleasantly. “I’ve been asking myself why you chose me for this assignment. It’s not exactly what I’ve done in the past. One would think anyone would do. Which makes me rather uncomfortable.”

Bernard heaved a heartfelt sigh. “My dear boy, you’ve begun to suspect
everyone
of nefarious purposes. Including your superiors.”

“Not everyone,” Justin replied.

“Good,” Bernard said. “As for your question, the reasons we chose you for this job ought to be perfectly clear. First, it is precisely because you
don’t
do this sort of thing. No one will suspect you. Second, this invention is important. Far too important to entrust to anyone less able than you. You’re the ace up our sleeve, m’boy.”

Justin’s smile was acrid. “So lovely to be needed.”

Bernard ignored the sarcasm. “Tell me about this plan of yours.”

Justin relaxed and crossed an ankle over his knee. “I have been asked—no, that’s not quite correct—I have been
coerced
into renting out North Cross Abbey for a society wedding.”

“I take it you are not the lucky groom?”

“Gads, no,” Justin said. “What woman in her right mind would have me? I have no ostensible career other than flittering about the world drawing pictures of birds and annoying the natives with impertinent questions about local habitat. Since I am constantly pressing my friends abroad for free room and board, the family coffers are viewed with the direst speculation. Added to which, I’m never home.

“No, I’m not the groom. Never will be. I’m simply the unfortunate owner of the house to which the bride feels she must return triumphant in order to expiate the grim ghosts of her working-class antecedents.”

“I am sure you are making sense, Justin, but I must beg you to be tolerant of my advanced years,” Bernard said. “What
are
you talking about?”

Justin didn’t look in the least penitent. “There is an American widow who has cartloads of money and a grudge against my grandfather. Seems her granny worked for the old bastard and considered him punctilious, condescending, contemptuous, and unfair. Which he was, of course, only the old girl—the granny, that is—took it personally. She raised her granddaughter—our blushing bride—like some Yankee Miss Haversham.”

Justin shook a finger in the air and intoned, “‘Return, child of my child, return to that cursed house richer, haughtier, and of more consequence than the old crock who paid me wages!’ ”

“Americans,” Bernard sighed.

“Indeed.” Justin lowered his hand and tucked it into his waistcoat pocket. “In order to achieve that end, the heiress hired a young woman in whose debt, coincidentally, I am, to secure the rental of North Cross.”

“Another young woman? What young woman?”

“Evelyn Cummings Whyte.”

Bernard ruminated a moment before his face lit with realization. “Good God, Jus, Lally’s granddaughter?”

Jus slanted Bernard a curious look. “Yes. Do you know her?”

“Only by reputation. Her grandfather is an acquaintance. He calls his grandaughter
Her Preternatural Formidableness.
Swears his entire family runs in terror of her.”

“Terror?” Justin tried out the word. “She’s as big as a minute and looks like a schoolgirl. In fact, I mistook her for one. Now, ‘strange,’ I might concede you, but I must disagree on ‘terrifying.’ ”

Bernard lifted his hand in a gesture of exasperation. “I’m sure you know best.”

“Normally I wouldn’t be so presumptuous,” Justin demurred. “But it’s amazing the camaraderie that can develop between housebreaker and house owner.”

“What in God’s name are you talking about now, Justin? Is this your idea of a joke? Your sense of the absurd has always been your Achilles’ heel. Speak plainly, man. What has a housebreaking to do with the Duke of Lally’s granddaughter and an American widow?”

“I thought I’d been clear,” Justin said. “Lady Evelyn broke into my house in order to collect on a favor I owed her. She felt it necessary to gain illegal access because legitimate routes had been closed to her by Beverly, who, acting upon my orders in an apparently futile attempt to keep my presence in the city from being known, told her I was not in.”

“Does it ever worry you that you play the part of an absentminded muttonhead too well?” Bernard asked, winning a brilliant smile from Justin.

“No, but I thank you for your concern. Again, where was I? Oh, yes. Apparently, her aunt—Lally’s daughter—arranges,” Justin groped for the right term, “matrimonial fracases or fetes or banquets or such.”

“Ah, yes, I recall,” Bernard mused.

“Well, the aunt has eloped, leaving Evie—Lady Evelyn—minding the store. Unfortunately, she seems to have been making a hash of it. She is certain this American widow is her last chance to save the family business from disgrace. And, I suspect, herself from humiliation.” His expression grew pensive. “I don’t think the word ‘fail’ is a part of that young woman’s lexicon.”

Bernard retained his good humor. He’d learned from long past experience not to bother trying to rein in Justin’s conversation. Eventually, Justin would get to the point. But Bernard once more was overtaken by the suspicion that Justin did it on purpose, to distract and trick a fellow into revealing more information than he intended to. “You are getting to your actual
plan,
are you not?”