Caprice: The Masqueraders Series - Book One (5 page)

Hadrian sighed. Subjected to the onerous burden of family duty at age seventeen, he had found himself accepting during the passing years an attitude, held by many, that he was a serious young man without imagination or fancy. Only the threat of war had turned his concern for his family into the greater concern for his nation. Against necessity, he had bought his colors in the cavalry and headed for the continent in 1811. For two years he had shuttled back and forth between the continent and England as a courier. Then his moment to shine had come.

At the time he believed duty called him. Now he understood himself better. In volunteering for the dangerous task of spying, he had wanted to prove things to himself. One was that he didn’t lack for imagination when it counted. The second was simply that he could escape, if only for a time, the restricted life that lay ahead for the fifth Earl of Ramsbury. He had proved that, and more.

Hadrian gulped his brandy, welcoming the burning warmth that cascaded down his throat into his stomach. Now he was home again, and obligations too long denied were beckoning to him. There would be no more escapades, no more intrigues, no more mysteries. Those moments were forever lost. The question remaining was how well he would readjust … or even if he could.

The brandy was not working. He set it aside half finished. “I need a woman!” he said under his breath.

He had learned a great deal about lust and the denial of it during the last four years. He had been incredulous when first told that a perfumed and bejeweled quick-tempered houri of the Dey of Algiers’s seraglio would be his chief source of information. Yet only a woman could get as close to the Dey’s inner court as one needed to be to learn his deepest secrets. And secrets she had learned, by methods he could easily surmise. Masquerading as one of the Dey’s soldiers, he had most often received information from a eunuch named Sumbul, and then passed it on to the English forces on the Peninsula. But one night he had been sent to meet the woman herself. She had taken him to her bed within minutes.

Her name was Yasmin. During the few times they had been together, they had each taken and given only what served their own needs. No finer feeling ever entered into it. In the world of intrigue, lust was a commodity, nothing more. But it had left him restless and unsatisfied even when his body was sated.

Suddenly a woman’s face came to mind. The details were lost for it was his reaction, and hers, that remained with him. It had been months since he had bedded any woman and, like an unregulated dam at spring flood, something had broken through when the widow at Plymouth touched him. From the moment she had thrown her arms about him, every inch of his sense-starved flesh had come instantly to life. Four days later it remained alive, painfully so.

“Bismillah!”
Hadrian uttered in surprise. She had spoken to him in Arabic! Yet he had been too surprised by her actions at the time to register the fact. His shock dissolved into laughter. The little baggage! Someone in the War Office must have put her up to it. Yet how could they? They had not known the exact date of his return.

He picked up his brandy, but memory again intervened and he absently lowered it again without drinking. What Englishwoman would have boasted of an acquaintance with an Arab? Why had he not insisted on knowing?

Another memory assailed him, that of a fragile and fleeting shudder that had passed through her as their lips met in a kiss. She had been amazed, thoroughly embarrassed, and a little afraid of his treatment. Yet she had not been repulsed. She had been as curious and surprised as he.

Hadrian shook his head. No, he would not think of his mysterious welcomer again. He would chalk it up as his final escapade before submitting once more to respectability.

He reached up to stroke his newly shaved upper lip and chin and smiled at the unfamiliar feel of it. At least he could be grateful for small things. No one would recognize the present Earl of Ramsbury as the bearded heathen who had accosted the widow on the pier at Plymouth. The Earl of Ramsbury would do as other London gentlemen did. He would find himself a “frail bark,” set her up in a house, and visit her on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and maybe the occasional Saturday. But it must be soon, very soon!

The door swung open as a young lady in pale blue burst unceremoniously into the room, her arms full of lilacs. “Oh, there you are! We’ve been looking everywhere for you.” Lady Jane Blackburne’s radiant smile rested on her brother. “Mama says that now that you’re home, you will escort me to my first ball.”

“Did she?” Hadrian tried to keep his expression pleasant, but the thought of the pinch of formal shoes gave his smile a brittle edge. “When is this grand occasion to happen?”

“In two weeks.”

The poised young woman with chestnut hair coiled sleekly about her head was almost a stranger to him. Lord, how the girl had grown. He tried to readjust to the vision of womanhood before him. “No doubt you’re in need of a hefty sum to have the requisite gown run up.”

“Mama’s modiste has already made it. ’Tis my very first Season. Just think. I could be married by Christmas!”

Hadrian winced at the thought, but Jane flung her arms about him, too happy to notice. The lilacs survived the crushing, but just barely. “I’m so glad it shall be you escorting me instead of Emory. He thinks far too much of himself these days.” Her tone was one of pure malice. “Serves him right to be taken down a peg. Earl, indeed! Well, no more. Eleanor McEvedy hopes his more unspeakable friends will drop him.” She clapped a hand over her mouth a bit belatedly. “I wasn’t supposed to say that.”

Hadrian gently relieved her of her floral burden. “Whyever not? Are all Emory’s friends unspeakable?”

“Some of them are,” she answered and cast so flirtatious a glance at her brother that it made him catch his breath. “But I wasn’t supposed to say so, not to you.”

“I see. Then you mustn’t say anything more.” He deliberately turned his back on her. Gad, but the girl had bloomed in his absence. There was nothing but Blackburne filling out her gown. And if he didn’t know better, he would suspect that she had been practicing her considerable charms on some unsuspecting young male. He’d arrived home just in time.

Jane cast a speculative eye at her eldest brother’s back. She had been breathless with joy since his return and wanted badly to impress him with her
savoir-faire.
“I don’t suppose that it matters now. Since I said as much …” She dangled the words in appeal, but Hadrian kept his back turned, determined not to help her put her neck in the noose. “Fie! What do I care what Emory says? He’s no longer the head of the household. You are.”

“Most assuredly,” Hadrian replied as he deposited the lilacs on the spinet top.

“Then you should be privy to all household matters,” she remarked by way of salving her conscience for betraying one brother to the other. “Eleanor is my friend, and if Emory hasn’t the good sense to see that she loves him, and that he ought to love her, then he deserves to be unhappy. It’s the fault of that fast set he’s been running with. I don’t care that they are Tulips.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’ve been away too long, brother dear,” Jane answered with great authority. “One must fall in with one or another mode of gentlemen’s dress these days. There is the Wanderer, the Revolutionary, the Bohemian, the Aesthete, the Visionary Poet, the Romantic, the Tulip, and the Sportive.” She cast a practiced eye over his clothing. “You are Sportive.”

“I see.” Remembering his brother’s daffodil-yellow trousers, Hadrian understood at once why his brother fit another mode. “As for these—ah, Tulips, why are they thought to be bad company?”

“Mama says they’re simply too self-involved. That’s because they spend all day being fitted for trousers and buying scented gloves, and all evening”—her voice dropped to a confidential whisper—”in gaming hells.”

“Where on earth did you learn such language?”

She smiled. “Emory says the most shocking things when he’s diddled.”

“Diddled?” Hadrian repeated in further amazement.

“It means—”

“I
know
what it means,” he said repressively. “But you should not!”

“Every modern young lady knows what it means when a man is inebriated.”

“They didn’t know what it meant when I was last in London,” he countered.

“Oh, but that was years and years ago.”

“Four,” Hadrian grumbled, beginning to feel as ancient as Methuselah. “Henceforth, I forbid you to know what it means.”

Jane’s dark brows, elegant imitations of her brother’s, rose halfway up her smooth young brow in exception to his tone. “Mama said you might be difficult at first, and that we were to indulge you until you felt more the thing. Therefore, I shall obey you.”

“Thank you.” Hadrian looked at his sister and wondered what lay ahead for him. The family had been warned to “indulge” him until he felt more himself. At the moment, he wondered if he would ever again feel like himself, or even if he knew what constituted feeling “himself.”

“Another thing, sis. You are not to again wear a morning gown that reveals quite so much of your—ah—shoulders.”

“Mama doesn’t disapprove,” Jane rejoined, her spine straightening in challenge.

“Mama’s sight must be failing. Since mine is quite sharp, my girl, we will rely on it in future.” He saw in her bright eyes the mutinous look that had once made her the terror of the Blackburne nursery, but he also saw her bring it under instant control when he bent his own considerable stare on her.

At that moment two feminine heads poked through the doorway. “Hadrian!” both girls cried together.

“Come in, children. Come in.” Hadrian held out his arms to enfold the redheaded, sixteen-year-old Saxona and blond fourteen-year-old Thordis, who both flew instantly to his side.

Not one to be left out, Jane once again embraced her brother about the waist. “I am so glad you’re home,” she declared with heartfelt emotion. “You will have us all sorted out in a trice. Mama says so.”

Hadrian cast his eyes heavenward and hoped that in this matter, at least, his mother had received divine wisdom. The yoke of his life was settling quickly onto his shoulders. Within days he would pick up the trappings of his old life: presiding over the dinner table, sitting for interminable hours in the House of Lords, and being pressed into attending balls, card parties, and soirees. At the moment he couldn’t help feeling a renewed fondness for burning desert sand and disgruntled camels.

“Shelby Tibbitts, Esq.,” Emory finished.

“A commoner? Who’s his benefactor?” Hadrian inquired.

“If you mean who vouches for him at the various clubs, then several of us do.”

The dinner hour was long past and the Blackburne brothers were deep into the manly tradition of remaining at table to drink their port and smoke. Hadrian expelled a perfect smoke ring into the air. “Why do you allow that sort of man to gamble with you?”

Emory was leaning back in his chair, both arms stretched out comfortably along the upholstered arms. “For sport, of course. Can’t have it said a commoner is sharper with the cards than a peer of the realm, what?”

Hadrian finished his port. He told himself his recent experiences with the ways of the world had made him too suspicious. Yet he could not shake the suspicion that all was not aboveboard when his brother owed an interloper four thousand pounds. He stood up. “Indulge me in a game of cards, Emory.”

Emory raised his head carefully, more foxed than he wished his brother to realize. “Here? Now?”

“In the library, if you will. And quickly, before
Maman
and the girls know what we’re about.”

Half an hour later, Hadrian could no longer harbor any illusions about his brother’s gullibility. Within the space of five hands, he had managed to slip in four different cheats, and not one of them had caught his sibling’s eye.

Disgusted and embarrassed by his brother’s ineptitude, Hadrian finally slammed his hands on the tabletop, scattering the hand-painted deck. “The point of gambling, brother, is to win occasionally, if only to confirm that one is, indeed, speculating on reasonable chance, and not providing a one-man charity bazaar for his friends and acquaintances!”

Emory closed his eyes as Hadrian’s voice thundered like cannon shot over his head. “I say, Hades, I’m no magician with the cards, but I can hold my own.”

The fact that Emory had let slip Hadrian’s nickname of long ago confirmed what Hadrian suspected, that Emory had not inherited a head for spirits either. It seemed Emory had little to recommend himself beyond his perfect profile and superb tailoring.

Whose fault is that?
his conscience goaded him.
Who should have been here to teach him and guide him, and protect him until he came into his own?

With his own setdown ringing in his ears, Hadrian gathered the cards and began shuffling the deck. “Attend to me, Emory. I wish to demonstrate a point.” With a patience at odds with his temper, he explained each and every cheater’s trick he had used, and how it could be spotted.

“Deuced clever of you, brother,” Emory allowed in fascination when he was done. “I never suspected a one.”

“That does you as little credit as it does me,” Hadrian replied. “In fact, it confirms my suspicions.” He looked his brother square in the eye. “I think your esquire has been cheating. And you, dear brother, have been his gull.”

Emory wet his lips but he did not deny the accusation. Now that he thought about it, he could not remember how Tibbitts came to be a part of his set. The man had appeared one day at his club, as a guest of another member. Recommended by the friend of a friend to join their table, Tibbitts had quickly shown himself to be amicable, well spoken, well dressed, and ever disposed to a game of chance. That he lived by his wits was acknowledged, though none ever complained about his extraordinary luck. Tibbitts was a right ’un—for a commoner; that was what everyone said.

“Daresay there’s no question of pursuing the matter with Tibbitts,” he ventured, hoping that his brother would simply shrug the matter off. “One can’t very well tottle up to him and say, ‘By the by, old man, it’s come to my attention that you might be indulging in sleight of hand when we sit down to a game of cards.” He shook his head and a shaft of dark hair fell forward across his handsome brow. “Not at all the thing.”