Double Deception (15 page)

He was unprepared for her look of astonishment and the flash of anger in her expressive eyes.

"You mistake the matter entirely, my lord, if you believe that is my ambition." She paused, meeting his gaze squarely. "We delude ourselves if we believe that we can be mistress—or master for that matter—of anything so enduring and grand as this." She made a sweeping gesture with her arm. "How impossibly arrogant you have grown, my lord, if you believe—as you appear to—that you can call this land yours. Do you imagine perchance that it will take note of your brief stewardship here? Other than adding your portrait to the Long Gallery and another headstone to the graveyard?"

She fell abruptly silent as though she had said more than she had intended, and Sylvester was struck by how precisely the widow's observations mirrored his own feelings. He had never put them into words quite so clearly before, and it seemed odd to him that a female should have understood so well his innermost thoughts. Either the widow was much wiser than he had given her credit for, or she was a clever trickster who thought to pull the wool over his eyes.

He cleared his throat. "Are you telling me that you do not aspire to be mistress here, madam?" he demanded, deliberately twisting her words. "If this is true, why not accept my offer and return to London? Three thousand pounds wisely invested will keep you in relative comfort."

The widow glanced at him pityingly. "London is no place to bring up a child, my lord. Would you raise your daughter there?" Her eyes dropped and she turned to gaze out at the peaceful fields and meadows around them. "I want Penelope to have a place where she can feel she belongs," Athena continued in a softer voice, "as I once belonged at Rothingham Manor. A place like Standish Park, her father's home, where she has every right to feel welcome. I cannot impose upon my aunt forever. We have been too long without a home of our own, and I intend to do everything in my power to see that she gets one." 

"So you are refusing my offer, I take it?" 

Again the pitying glance. "It is not wealth I crave, my lord. I do not expect you to understand, of course. You have belonged here at the Castle all your life, as has Perry. What do you know of being cast off by those upon whom you thought you had some claim?"

"And you think Perry will understand any better when he learns that his betrothed attempted to seduce his father?"

Her face paled, and Sylvester derived a perverse satisfaction from the trembling of her lips. "I did no such thing, my lord!" she exclaimed angrily. "It was a mistake, as you well know."

He laughed mirthlessly. "That all depends on your point of view, my dear," he said flatly.

"Perry would never believe you."

There was a brave defiance in her voice that Sylvester could not but applaud. He admired courage, and Athena had more than her fair share. If only his son had not offered marriage to the first female who caught his fancy, he thought. If only Athena Standish had been ten years younger and unwed. If only he did not find her so deuced attractive himself.

"We shall have to put that to the test, my dear, shall we not?" he responded with a grim smile.

Without a word, Athena whirled her mare and cantered back the way they had come, her defiance evident in every line of her body.

Yes, my dear, Sylvester mused as he put heels to Ajax and followed her at a distance. We shall have to see about that.

Over the next few day, Athena found all sorts of excuses for avoiding the stable-yard at the hour set aide for the riding lessons. She regretted missing her daughter's progress, which—if Penny's excited recounting of her growing daring could be believed—was nothing short of miraculous. But she did not regret missing the earl's company. He had been present every afternoon, her daughter reported, and was so obliging as to help her mount Buttercup while Perry was occupied with Miss Rathbone.

Perhaps what disturbed Athena most, as she listened every evening to her daughter's happy chatter, was that her initial anger at Peregrine's besotted infatuation—for want of a better word—with Miss Rathbone had turned first to a numb resignation, then to something perilously close to disinterest. Despite her brave words to Lord St. Aubyn the other day, Athena felt increasingly disinclined to compete with the Beauty for the viscount's attention. If Perry insisted upon making a cake of himself over a female as brazen and ill-tempered as any Athena had ever encountered, even in London, then he deserved whatever he got.

Athena deliberately put the thorny question of her betrothal aside and set herself to find entertainment elsewhere. In this she found a willing ally in her hostess, who was turning out to be far less of a dragon than Athena had originally imagined. If anything. Lady Sarah leaned in the opposite direction, displaying an unexpected warmth and kindliness beneath her crusty exterior. Even Aunt Mary, gradually overcoming her initial fear of being labeled a Cit's daughter by their hostess, had remarked upon what she called Lady Sarah's subterfuge.

"Her ladyship merely pretends to be a dragon, my dear," she had told Athena only yesterday. "I do believe the old gel enjoys playacting. Did you know that she and Mrs. Rathbone ran away from their Seminary together to go on the stage?"

Athena gazed at her aunt in amazement. "What Banbury tale is this, Aunt?"

"It is quite true, dear. I do not believe her ladyship wished it to become public knowledge, of course, but Mrs. Rathbone does like to rattle on about the times they spent together as girls. And one afternoon it slipped out. Of course, I pretended not to notice, but her ladyship admitted it and regretted that she had been stopped by her angry Papa before she could realize her dreams of becoming an actress."

"Lady Sarah said that? And are you saying that Mrs. Rathbone
did
become an actress?" This notion was so startling that Athena could hardly credit her ears.

"Well, yes," her aunt replied, glancing over her shoulder conspiratorially. "Apparently she became quite famous, too."

"Did she tell you so herself?" Athena asked, amused in spite of herself.

"Oh, no! Lady Sarah said so. And you will never guess, dear, her stage name was Molly O'Neil. She has been retired for years, of course, but just think, Athena, I may have seen her at Drury Lane with my dear James and never known it!"

This revelation from Lady Sarah's past struck Athena as highly romantic, and her appreciation for the earl's aunt increased. The knowledge that the ever-so-proper Lady Sarah Steele had committed—or had intended to commit—the unpardonable sin of taking to the stage gave her an aura of rakishness that Athena found hard to ignore. So it was with considerable pleasure that she performed little tasks for her ladyship, one of which was the addressing of a pile of invitations for an informal ball Lady Sarah had planned for Peregrine's birthday the following week.

The sun shining in the open windows of the morning room had enticed Athena to choose to complete her task here rather than at the elegant French escritoire in her own sitting room upstairs. There was little chance of interruption, for Perry had driven off at dawn in his curricle to look at a horse at a neighboring farm, while Aunt Mary and Penelope had walked over to the estate lake to visit a new family of cygnets her daughter had learned about from the stable-lads. Miss Rathbone was still abed as was her custom, so Athena felt confident she could finish the invitations before nuncheon.

She was but halfway towards this goal when she heard the door open behind her. Thinking it was Jackson on some housekeeping errand, Athena did not acknowledge the intruder until he stood beside the desk, his buckskin breeches and dark blue coat announcing his identity as clearly as though he had spoken.

Reluctantly, Athena raised her eyes and stared coolly up at the earl.

"Good morning, Athena," he said caressingly, a slow smile teasing his sensuous lips.

"Good morning, my lord." Athena did not trust that smile, and the sight of it caused the blood to flutter wildly in her veins. "I believe I have asked you not to use my name, my lord," she said sharply, taking refuge in anger.

He merely laughed, and the sound of it brought the color to her cheeks. "Allow an old recluse his eccentricities, my dear," he murmured. "I have developed a fondness for your name, Athena. Unlike Mrs. Rathbone, I have a predilection for the classics, and the name fits you far better than you can imagine."

"Now you are being ridiculous, my lord." Athena dipped her quill in the ink-stand and reached for another invitation. "You must be the only person of my acquaintance who believes that."

"Perhaps they do not know you as well as I do, my dear."

"You do not know me at all, my lord, so do not deceive yourself," she replied sharply, all too uncomfortably aware that his lordship knew considerably more about her than was strictly proper.

Athena spoke impulsively, and the slow grin that spread over the earl's face told her that she had provoked the wolf in him. "Oh, I believe I do," he drawled, the blue of his eyes so dark that Athena was reminded of a deep pool at midnight.

Suppressing a flash of panic, Athena dropped her eyes to her work and reached for another invitation from the stack in front of her.

"Should you not be working on that treatise of yours, my lord?" she inquired, falling back on sarcasm to hide her uneasiness. "I was reading in the latest journal of the Royal Historical Society that it is eagerly awaited. Although I understand that Sir Thomas Harding is also preparing a series of lectures on Chinese porcelain which includes the early Ming dynasty."

The earl's expression sobered instantly. "Harding is a vulgar charlatan," he said dismissively. "And he is not sponsored by the Society. A mere dilettante. Two years ago he touted himself as an expert on Egyptian artifacts; this year it is Chinese pottery; next year it might well be Indian religious icons. Only the ignorant believe that getting one's name in the news makes a man an expert."

"I wondered why I had never heard of him before," Athena responded absently, dipping her quill in the ink-pot and addressing an invitation with her careful copperplate.

There was a slight pause. "And what do you know of Oriental pottery, my dear?" the earl asked in an amused voice. "It is not exactly a favorite topic of conversation among the ladies."

"Some ladies occasionally read something other than the latest romantic novels, my lord," Athena said dryly.

"And reading an article or two in an historical journal makes you an expert, I presume?"

This remark was so indicative of masculine superiority on the subject that Athena instantly bristled. "I would presume nothing if I were you, my lord." She raised her eyes from her task and glared at him. "And I do not recall claiming to be an expert. It does so happen, however, that I have read more than an article or two on the Ming Dynasty. Much more, in fact. My father, who never claimed to be an expert on the matter either," she added tartly, "has a small but rather select collection of vases. Or he did when last I was at Rothingham Manor."

Athena bowed her head over the invitations again. Why had she been provoked into mentioning her father to this insensitive oaf? she wondered. Remembering her dear Papa was still painful after all these years of silence. Although Athena still wrote for his birthday and Christmas, she had long since given up all hope of receiving a response. Her stepmother must be very insecure indeed if she had alienated the baronet so completely from his only daughter. And her Papa must be more infatuated with the blond widow than Athena had thought possible in a man of his years.

"Your father is a collector?" The earl's voice sounded sharp with disbelief. "I thought I was aware of every collector, large and small, on both sides of the Channel."

Once again Athena was struck by the arrogance of this assumption. She smiled condescendingly. "Evidently you were mistaken, my lord. My father's collection is small, insignificant almost when compared to yours, no more than twenty or twenty-five pieces. But he has been collecting for thirty years at least, and does have a few exceptional specimens."

"How can you be sure that these pieces are exceptional?" he demanded curiously.

Athena glanced at him pityingly. "Sir Joshua Carruthers—whom I presume you
have
heard of, my lord," she added sarcastically—"used to take the waters in Bath when I was a girl, and Papa invited him out to Rothingham Manor to see the collection. Sir Joshua was so impressed he made my father a rather extravagant offer. He has been dead these ten years or more, so he cannot corroborate this story, of course. But it hardly matters to me what you believe, my lord. I would never have mentioned my father's collection at all had I known I would be subjected to this cross-examination."

She turned back to her task dismissively, but the earl did not take the hint. She could see his buckskin-clad thighs out of the corner of her eye, where he had perched on the corner of her desk.

"If you have no objection, my dear," he said after a considerable pause, during which Athena addressed another invitation, "I shall write to Sir Henry on the subject. Perhaps he can be prevailed upon to sell his collection."

Athena glanced up in surprise. "Whyever should I object, my lord?" she said. "But I doubt Father will sell."

"Perhaps you might help to persuade him, Athena?"

"Not if you insist upon using my name, my lord," she responded sharply, inexplicably annoyed that the earl continued to disregard her wishes. "Besides," she added truthfully, "I might actually hurt your cause. My father has not acknowledged a single one of my letters since I came back from the Peninsula. And now, my lord," she added when he did not reply, "I have promised your aunt that these invitations will be completed before nuncheon—"

"The invitations can wait, my dear," he interrupted brusquely. "It is too lovely a day to be cooped up inside. Come for a ride with me, Athena. I must go over to the village on an errand, and thought you might enjoy a view of our Cornish coast."

The invitation took her by surprise. She looked up at him and something in the depths of his midnight-blue eyes caused her heart to leap. If only things had been different, she mused, mesmerized by the slow smile that softened his harsh mouth. If only she might go with this man whose dark, angular face attracted her as Perry's fair perfection never had, whose eyes promised the passionate woman in her a sensuality she had been too long without.