Caprice: The Masqueraders Series - Book One (4 page)

“My, my,” Heloise murmured. Her quick eyes did not miss the flicker of color that darted in and out of Clarissa’s cheek. “Do you know what makes a good marriage, Clarie? Electrification!” Clarissa’s mystified expression made her smile. “All Holtons possess it, Quentin in abundant proportions. The moment he stepped into my dressing room all those years ago, I felt as if Jupiter himself had struck me with a bolt. The clap of thunderous recognition was so loud it echoed in my head for days afterward. Do you know he once fought a duel over me? Find a man who will stop at nothing to possess you, then you will know what I mean. Electrification!”

Remembering the wanton desire the stranger had invoked in her, Clarissa rose quickly to her feet. “If you will excuse me, Aunt, I should like to refresh myself and rest before dinner.”

“You do that, dear.” Once Clarissa was gone, Heloise’s gaze moved unerringly to the portrait. “I knew it! I knew it! The girl’s shriveling for lack of love. Now I suppose you expect me to solve your niece’s dilemma. Very well. I would rather have had the winter to prepare, but the Season has begun. Exotic dark looks ain’t the kick of fashion even if Byron will champion the dark Incomparable. Not that I would allow Clarie anywhere near him.” She smiled secretly. “ ’Tis a pity, really, that that poet’s appetites are too strong for this missish era. The combination of the earthy Holton temperament coupled with the Byronic disposition for forming passionate attachments might have resulted in a gratifying affair for each—not to mention a poem or two. Yet I see a longing for children in Clarie’s gaze, and that means marriage.
Bismillah!
Quentin, you must help me improvise!”

Hours later, as she prepared for bed, Clarissa sat before the mirror of her vanity, giving her dark hair a hundred strokes. At dinner her aunt had lectured her on the necessity of hiring a personal maid. The idea amused Clarissa, who had looked after herself ever since she left England at age fifteen. As for Aunt Heloise, she had never been able to abide any maid for more than six months at a time. Just now she was without one and Potsman was filling in. She suspected that tying corset strings and working rows of tiny buttons were not among the majordomo’s strong points. They certainly had not been Evelyn’s. Poor Evelyn, she had failed him as a wife, and as a woman.

The life of a military daughter had left her with few illusions about men. Oh, she had learned to admire their strength, bravery, and endurance, and to accept their frailties where gambling, drink, and women were concerned. Had she forfeited, by being constantly with men, the fascination most ladies felt when in a man’s company?

She had never been fascinated by Evelyn, not even after their wedding night. The fault was hers. She had read the accusation in his eyes each of the few nights they spent together. He had plainly wanted something from her that she had not known how to give him. Once, when she tried to question him about his wishes in bed, he turned bright red and denied the very suggestion, blustering and storming about until she retired to the far edge of the mattress, too ashamed to ever again mention it. A few days later he was ordered to the front. He had left her without so much as a farewell kiss.

Clarissa paused in her brushstrokes as the memory of the stranger’s kiss came to mind. To her surprise, the remembrance of it was stronger than any she retained of Evelyn’s first warm embraces. She recalled the firmness of his lips, smooth yet exciting, and how his hands had cradled her head, strongly and yet with the intent merely to instruct her in his need.

Lifting her head, she caught sight of her own gaze in the mirror, a dark stare somewhere between raisin and true deep violet, and felt again a pang of desire. Why was she capable of more feeling for a stranger than for her own spouse? And feel she did, even to the tingling of her breasts beneath her gown.

Embarrassed and annoyed, she slammed her brush down two strokes short of her goal and rose from her seat. A kiss from a stranger. No wonder she should recall it in such detail. It was as shocking as anything that had ever happened to her.

She rose to retrieve the silver luggage tag from her portmanteau and looked at it again. It bore the arms of an earl. No, it could not belong to the man who had kissed her. She replaced it.

Who was the corsair? She doubted she would ever know.

“Not that it matters in the least,” she murmured to herself as she lifted back the covers of her bed and slid deep into the down mattress. They were never likely to again meet.

London, April 1814

In an old yet still fashionable section of London known as Hanover Square, surrounded by the full trappings of one of the finest private libraries in the city, the Blackburne brothers were considering the future. The elder, a tall dark man with piercing graygreen eyes and cropped black hair that still hinted at its tendency to curl, stood at attention beside a magnificent scrollwork desk. His companion, equally tall yet more slender, with hair and eyes of the same hue as his brother’s, sprawled inelegantly in a nearby chair.

“Say it again. Devilish glad to have you home, old man!” Emory hoped his tone did not betray an overabundance of feeling at his older brother’s miraculous return. After all, Hadrian had been home some four days. That was long enough for a sophisticated gentleman like himself to come to grips with delight.

“Never took to heart the news of your demise,” he continued. “Of course,
Maman
and the girls created a devil of a dustup about it. Daresay you’d have been proud of the funeral we gave you. Great brouhaha of an affair. Full honor guard, the Regent himself present. St. Paul’s filled to the rafters. Weeping ladies everywhere. ‘Pon my oath, I don’t believe a full half of the dears actually
knew
you!”

“You’ll understand if I don’t share in the glory of your reflections,” Hadrian Blackburne replied dryly. “One hardly wishes to conjure up an image of one’s own funeral, for all it is some fifteen months safely in the past.”

He strolled over to the sideboard where he removed the stopper from a crystal decanter and poured two generous portions of French brandy into waiting goblets. Spying Emory’s look of surprise, he said, “I fully realize the before-noon hour. Yet were you to understand the extent to which circumstance has driven me the past two years, you would overlook my imbibing as the privilege of a thought-to-be-dead son returned to the bosom of his family.” He handed Emory a brandy.

“I should like to hear of your adventures,” Emory replied, pleased that his brother had included him in his indulgence. “None of that Banbury tale you spun for
Maman
and the girls. One doesn’t soil tender ears, what?” He leaned forward. “For instance, how did you come by that wicked scar? Did you kill the man responsible?”

Hadrian received this request for a bloody tale with mild irritation. Only boys in knee breeches and men with no experience of the atrocities of war would be so ready to be regaled with battlefield horrors. He glanced briefly at his city-bred brother, considering and dismissing his cutaway morning coat of Hessian blue, waistcoat of crimson superfine, and strapped trousers of yellow nankeen. As for his elaborately contrived cravat, Hadrian could only sigh. “What the deuce does a mature man wear these days?”

Thinking the question had its source in envy, Emory preened. “Bond Street is the place to look.” His gaze, a softer reflection of his brother’s, ran in assessment over Hadrian’s brown cloth riding coat and beige breeches stuffed into well-worn Hessians of mirror gloss. His linen was spotless, but in place of a cravat he had tied a simple double loop of cloth about his deeply bronzed throat. “Lud! You will prove a tailor’s challenge.”

“Kindly keep your opinions of my dress to yourself,” Hadrian snapped without heat. But the momentary distraction had given him a chance to rethink the idea of giving Emory a frank history of the past two years of his life.

He had been nothing short of a government agent, a spy, a designation that carried with it a certain unsavoriness, no matter whose side one was on. Would Emory accept the confidentiality required of such a disclosure?

Gazing at Emory’s handsome yet spoiled expression, he realized with an accompanying stab of guilt that he might have neglected his duty in going off to war four years earlier and leaving his then-seventeen-year-old brother. The fact that he had been left by his father’s death in charge of a household at the exact same age did not signify. Emory’s experiences with family responsibilities did not seem to have forced an early maturity upon him. Until he had a chance to correct this error, it would seem wiser not to tell his brother what he had done, and why. “What do you make of the odds that Boney will escape from Elba?”

Emory screwed up his face and announced his attitude in an Anglo-Saxon crudity.

“Commendable from the mouth of a schoolboy.” Hadrian paused significantly. “But scarcely worthy of a Blackburne.” Ignoring Emory’s blush, he went briskly on, “So that you may speak more intelligently on the subject in future, I’ll sum up recent events for you.”

“If it’s a history lesson you’re puffing up for, then I’d as lief play truant,” Emory responded. “Rather you told me about your exploits.”

Hadrian shrugged. “There’s little enough to tell. I’ve been in the Mediterranean since shortly before the Spanish Campaign with General the Duke of Wellington in ’12.”

“What about the dispatch that said that you’d been killed at the front fifteen months ago?”

“A mistake,” Hadrian answered smoothly, though his anger over his superiors’ decision to send that dispatch would not soon be forgotten.

“Then why did you never write?
Maman
was beside herself with sorrow.”

The reproach was well earned and stung despite the many and various rationales Hadrian had used over the past two years to appease his conscience about his silence. Paradoxically, his feelings of guilt erupted as annoyance. “Who is telling this tale? You’ve heard, of course, of the Barbary Coast?” Emory nodded. “Then you must be aware that for years the European nations as well as the new American states have been paying tribute in return for safe passage of their ships in and out of the region. It fell to me, by means which are none of your affair, to ascertain whether the Dey of Algiers could be persuaded to give up this decorous form of piracy.”

Emory’s disappointment that his brother had no meatier role in the Napoleonic Wars showed plainly on his face. “How am I to entertain my friends with talk of Arab treaties?”

“If my story bores you, then by all means feel free to abandon my company.”

A mild setdown from Hadrian had always been enough to silence Emory before, yet their separation had made him less careful of treading upon his brother’s temper. “Do be a sport, Hadrian. You allowed us to think you were dead. You owe an accounting of yourself.”

With a tolerance he would not have shown before he left, Hadrian proceeded to relate an edited version of his life as a soldier. He spoke lightly of his indoctrination into the Arab world, omitting the political and emphasizing the picturesque side of the Ottoman culture. As he talked the years and distance between them dissolved until Emory was once more the younger brother, in awe and envy of a brilliant older brother who was both bolder and more worldly than he ever thought to be.

“You mean they really hold auctions of naked women?” Emory interrupted him at last.

“They refer to them as marriage markets,” Hadrian replied dryly. “Not unlike Almack’s, if one overlooks the dress code.”

Emory tried to adjust his imagination to include the sight of dozens of naked young ladies dancing with titled young gentlemen under the censorious gazes of the lady patronesses, but the image failed. “You’re bamming me!”

Hadrian smiled. “The women, for all you would not credit it, are more protected from the world than our own mother and sisters. They are virgins purchased for marriage or to serve one master. As that master might have several wives as well as concubines, they spend the better part of their lives enclosed in a fortress with only other females and eunuchs for company.”

“What a waste!” Emory responded. “I say, did you—?” A glance from his brother made him back away from the direct question, but his curiosity was too strong to be denied. “One hears Arabian women are all beauties.” When this gambit brought no response, he burst out with “Did you ever receive the favors of one?”

The corners of Hadrian’s mouth lifted. “What would you have me answer? ‘No’ would make me seem a poor spirit, while ‘Yes’ would serve me no better in the role of seducer.”

“You did!” Emory crowed in vicarious delight. “I say, now that’s a story worth repeating.”

Hadrian sighed. So much for the likelihood of his being a good moral influence on his brother.

Emory watched as Hadrian refilled his glass and for the first time wondered what, indeed, had happened to him. The swarthy “Arab” in white who had approached him on the doorstep four days earlier seemed a complete stranger. Had Hadrian not spoken first, Emory doubted he would ever have recognized him. Even after they had embraced in joyful greeting, he could not shake the feeling that the man staring at him with hooded eyes was not the brother who had left London four years earlier. There were lines in Hadrian’s lean face that at thirty years of age time alone had not made. The silver scar scoring from left brow to hairline seemed almost sinister. The trim but robust figure of the cavalry officer had undergone a similar change. It was as if Hadrian were now carved of bone. The gaunt lines of his face would no doubt yield to the generous helpings of beef and Yorkshire pudding their mother was busily arranging. But, would anything ever soften that aggressive gaze?

“It seems there something he would not have seen …”

For the life of him, Emory could not say from where that poetic line had sprung, yet it exactly matched his thoughts. Hadrian had changed. Recognition of that change made Emory uneasy. At home with the comforts and pleasures in his own world, he deliberately avoided all unpleasantness. With the report of Hadrian’s death he had assumed the title of Earl of Ramsbury and all the attendant responsibilities, which he abhorred. That was one reason he welcomed Hadrian’s return.

“Enough of me. Suppose you tell me how have you weathered as the Earl of Ramsbury?” Hadrian said when he had found a seat on the divan opposite his brother.

“Truth to tell, the title chafed a bit. ’Fraid my shoulders weren’t meant to carry the burdens of an earldom.” Emory dismissed the matter with a wave of his hand. “Spoils the line of my coat, don’t you know.”

Hadrian returned Emory’s smile, and the similarity of the two obliterated for the moment the nine years of difference in their ages. “Be assured, Emory, the earldom is again my concern. Still, I’m amazed by your lack of resistance. Your pockets will be lightened considerably by the transference.”

Emory’s fairer skin reddened as his eyes fell before his brother’s bright stare. There was something in those eyes, so like yet so different from his own, that seemed to see inside a man. Had Hadrian already gotten wind of his monetary troubles? No, it wasn’t possible that he had heard anything … yet. It hadn’t occurred to him until this very moment that Hadrian had returned just when he could least afford a brother’s meddling in his affairs.

Emory lifted his head and winked. “Did you think me a meanspirited spoilsport? The title was never mine to keep, always said so. Just to prove how damnably glad I am to have you back, I won’t forbear to dun you for an advance on my allowance.”

Hadrian arched a brow. “Were the family purse strings not in your hands?”

Emory blushed a second time, reminded of the one fly in his ointment. “Have you forgotten the clause you added to your will when you bought your colors? Monies from the estates have been kept in trust pending my twenty-first birthday. I draw an allowance, same as any wet-behind-the-ears schoolboy.”

“I had quite forgotten the matter.” Hadrian subjected him to a long, probing look. “But there is more to tell, isn’t there?”

“Now see here, Hadrian!” Emory began, stung to the quick by his brother’s all-too-accurate assessment. “You needn’t think that you may saunter in after two years and simply …”

The change in Hadrian’s expression quelled the last of this speech. “It comes to mind, Emory, that there are times when your tongue far exceeds your grasp of its command.”

Emory did not want to buckle under his brother’s scrutiny, yet he could not resist it either. A firm believer in the path of least resistance, he conceded the obvious. “I may have spent a bit ahead, knowing what was to come.”

Hadrian saw that it didn’t occur to Emory that this admission gave lie to his earlier protestations of belief in Hadrian’s return, but he let it pass. “Name the amount and the creditors.”

“Mere gaming debts, brother.” Emory flashed a set of even teeth. “Only four thousand pounds.”

Hadrian was prepared to be generous but the amount that came tripping off Emory’s tongue jerked an explosive “Good God!” from him. “That’s a yearly allowance in many high-society households. It’s more than half of yours.”

Emory tapped his ringed fingers nervously on his trouser leg. Had Hadrian remained away until June, he could have righted matters with none the wiser. “If I’d known that you’d turned into a pinchpenny while you were away, I wouldn’t have mentioned the subject.”

“Had I known you’d turned into a gaming fool, I’d have returned sooner,” Hadrian rejoined.

Caught in a snag of cross-purpose emotions, Emory rose to his feet, his face flushed scarlet, “I’m late for an engagement,” he said stiffly.
“Maman
and the girls expected me to accompany them on an outing. Thank the saints you’re back. They seem to have forgotten I have a life of my own.”

“But of course,” Hadrian replied, backing away from the subject of gambling debts for the moment. Perhaps he had been gone too long to judge fairly. He clapped Emory familiarly on the shoulder. “We will speak again.”

Yet the moment Emory left the library, Hadrian expelled a breath of exasperation. He had not realized how tense he was until the door closed behind his brother. Now the full realization of adjustments he had yet to make fell into place before him. He was once again the Earl of Ramsbury, eldest son, head of a household, holder of a seat in the House of Lords, and the guardian of a brother and three younger sisters. Then there was his mother, bless her. She had emerged from a two-day fit of hysteria, which began when she recognized him, and had begun immediately to plot a social schedule on his behalf.

Hadrian finished his second brandy as hastily as the first, but it made little impression upon him. “More’s the pity,” he grumbled and poured a third. Home less than four days and he felt pulled in a dozen different directions. He had always envied Emory his ability to simply turn away from annoyance. It seemed a talent he had never possessed.