Duke of Thorns (Heiress Games 1) (14 page)

What had happened to make him so dark?

And why did she care, when he was not hers to rescue?

“Perhaps you should let your feelings surprise you,” she said.

“Feelings are not particularly useful for my ambitions.”

She nodded. “Nor are they for mine. And yet I would rather indulge occasionally and pay the price for it than live forever without them.”

“Is that so, Miss Briarley?”

The way his voice wrapped around her name made her shiver. “I will spare you my feelings so that they do not inconvenience your plans,” she said. “Do not worry yourself.”

“This would be a good time to call me ‘your grace,’” he murmured.

He had surprised her this time, and she laughed in spite of herself. “Never, sirrah.”

He tapped the fingers she’d wrapped around his arm. “Next time it will be a ruler across the knuckles, my dear.”

She laughed again. Some of the tension between them ebbed — but it was tension at low tide, not a complete retreat. “We’re sufficiently away from the house,” she said. “Tell me everything I must know about titles. I am in such suspense that I cannot think for the excitement of it.”

Thorington looked down at her and smiled. She had tilted her head up to look at him just in time. At any other moment, the stiff sides of her bonnet would have kept her from seeing that peculiar light in his eyes as he regarded her.

“I live to serve, Miss Briarley. We begin with the barons.”

*     *     *

Callista was a quick study. She knew the rudiments of British noble titles and forms of address from reading months-old editions of
The Times
. And she seemed to have a good recollection of faces and mannerisms. It was easy enough for him to describe other members of the party and have her recognize the person in question, even if she didn’t yet know every nuance of their social and political lives.

After almost two hours of exploring the cliffs and going over titles, though, she seemed to have tired of their lesson. Thorington had sent servants ahead to the cliffs with a few chairs and some light foodstuffs. He’d also left word for Anthony that he was to join them, but it didn’t take a keen mind to guess that Anthony had disobeyed him.

Callista still sat dutifully in her chair, but she watched the swell of water on the horizon. The bonnet gave her away — it was too easy to see that her head was oriented toward the sea rather than toward his voice.

“What are the proper addresses of Ferguson’s sisters?” he asked.

“Lady Catherine and Lady Maria are in attendance with him, although I’ve yet to meet them. They are the blonde twins who are of an age with Lady Serena. His other sister is Lady Folkestone, a marchioness.”

He hadn’t mentioned Ellie, although he was acquainted with her. “How do you know of Lady Folkestone?” he asked. “She isn’t due to attend.”

“Her husband, Lord Folkestone, is in shipping,” she said shortly.

“Who is the Duchess of Rothwell’s cousin?”

“Lord Salford. He’s the earl with the pretty dark-haired wife — you can tell they’re newly wed by the way he smiles at her.”

“Where is Salford’s family seat?”

“Why on earth do I need to know that?” Callista asked.

Rafe, dozing on the blanket next to them, yawned. “Indeed, why do any of us need to know that?”

“Because knowing the enemy makes it easier to defeat them.”

“Do you consider everyone your enemy?” Callista asked.

At least he’d regained her attention. “No. But friends can turn to enemies and enemies to allies. Easier to change course at a moment’s notice if you are educated about everyone on the field.”

Rafe yawned again, more obviously this time. “Miss Briarley, ask his grace who Lord Salford’s pretty dark-haired wife is.”

“Is there a story behind that question, Lord Rafael?”

She addressed the question to Rafe, but she turned to Thorington as she said it. Thorington interrupted before his brother could cause more trouble. “Lady Salford was formerly Miss Prudence Etchingham. Her father was Lord Harcastle. What rank must he have been if he was a lord and she was a mere miss?”

“A baron or viscount,” she snapped. “What else is interesting about her?”

“There is absolutely nothing interesting about her,” Thorington said.

Serena and Portia were playing cards on the other blanket, but that quelling tone brought their interest rather than scaring them away. Serena looked up. “Lady Salford would have made a good duchess.”

“Is that so?” Callista asked. She still looked at Thorington, but now her eyes narrowed. “Did you have a
tendre
for Lady Salford?”

“No. What will Salford’s son be called, should he have one?”

“I don’t give a fig for Salford’s son,” Callista said.

His siblings laughed. Thorington tapped his walking stick. “He will be Viscount Whitworth. And their daughters?”

“Should I not focus on people who are alive and able to cause me problems?” Callista asked. “Or do even infants earn your enmity?”

Portia tossed a card aside and picked up another. “Thorington doesn’t have enemies. No one is allowed to disturb him long enough to reach that status.”

Rafe shifted up onto his elbow so that he could look at Callista and Thorington more easily. “That’s not quite true, Portia. Salford was his enemy for ages. How Gav managed to forgive him for winning Lady Salford is still a mystery to me.”

Thorington refused to be baited. “What, if anything, was wrong with how Lord Rafael just spoke?”

Callista was frustrated — he saw it in the way her eyes flashed. “Lord Rafael should have told me what he was about from the start, rather than whetting my curiosity.”

“My apologies, Miss Briarley,” Rafe said.

He didn’t sound contrite. Thorington ignored him. “Correct. But he was also impertinently improper. As you’ve not been given leave to call me or Lady Portia by our given names, he should have been more formal as well despite his closer acquaintance with us.”

“Miss Briarley is to be our sister, though,” Serena said, sounding quite sensible. “I’m sure the rules can be relaxed with her.”

Portia shot her a look. “We weren’t supposed to tell Thorington that we knew. Anthony will be unhappy with you.”

“As though it isn’t obvious,” Serena sniped. “Why would Anthony refuse to come with us today? He usually loves the sea. And why would Thorington care to teach her anything unless he was grooming her to be Anthony’s bride?”

Callista looked down at his sisters. “Perhaps the duke is being friendly.”

His sisters both laughed. “Thorington doesn’t do anything without some purpose,” Serena said.

Thorington couldn’t see Callista’s face, so he could only guess what she was thinking. But her words surprised him. “Then should I assume that he wished to marry the new Lady Salford for some purpose as well? Or do you think it was a love match?”

Portia and Serena glanced at each other. “We wouldn’t want to gossip,” Portia said.

Rafe snorted. “Tell us another fairy tale.”

Thorington cleared his throat. “It is time to return to Maidenstone. Miss Briarley has learned enough for one afternoon.”

Callista held up her hand in a gesture he recognized — it was something he might have done. “A moment, if you please. I am curious about Lady Salford.”

“Curiosity is highly unseemly for a gentlewoman,” Thorington said.

“Then it is lucky for me that you chose to start with titles instead of manners,” Callista replied.

Rafe sat up. Thorington didn’t like the way his eyes moved from Thorington to Callista and back again. “We are all lucky, Miss Briarley,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to see you change at all.”

From the smile on Rafe’s face a moment after that sentence, Thorington guessed that Callista’s grin must have been radiant.

He damned the hat that blocked his view of her. He thought of telling her that poke bonnets were sorely out of fashion and that she should only wear caps to their next lessons. Instead, he stood and offered her his arm. “Shall we, Miss Briarley?”

She looked up at him, and he finally saw her eyes again. But the light there wasn’t quite what he expected.

If she were interested in him as a man, she might have been jealous. If she were interested in his life as fodder for gossip, she might have been curious. He’d seen every emotion across both spectrums from Ariana.

Instead, she rose from her chair and took his arm, squeezing it in a gesture that another would have called comforting. “I am sorry she didn’t marry you, your grace. I’m sure you would have made her happy.”

She couldn’t have stunned him more if she’d hit him over the head with a rock. And it wasn’t her unexpected use of his proper address, after all her refusals, that had startled him.

He knew why he hadn’t recognized that light in her eyes before.

It was compassion.

For him.

He stared into her eyes, saw the invitation there. Her mouth tilted up into a tentative smile.

He couldn’t bear it.

“I would not have made her happy,” he said.

She tilted her head. “Oh, I’m sure…”

“No,
I’m
sure,” he said, cutting her off. “I had kidnapped her and was on the verge of marrying her by force when Salford rescued her. She would have hated me for the rest of our unfortunate lives. Deservedly so. But I would have had the revenge I wanted from her.”

Callista’s mouth dropped open.

“Do not make me into a hero, Miss Briarley,” he said, his voice low. “I assure you I will never be one. I will do what I must to uphold our bargain. And I will see that Anthony gives you the best of everything. But don’t look for kindness in me. I do not have it to give.”

She pulled her hand away from his arm. “I see,” she said.

Her eyes dimmed. He forced himself to watch, to make sure she really
did
see. Only when wariness had fully replaced compassion did he turn away from her.

“Rafe, see the ladies back to Maidenstone. I need some air.”

Rafe stood and offered his arm to Callista without comment. Thorington strode away, not waiting to see whether the rest of them obeyed him.

It was better this way. Better to groom her, and walk away, than to make her think he was something he wasn’t. She needed security and someone who could preserve her fortune. He couldn’t give her either.

But damned if he didn’t wish he deserved her.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

An hour after they’d returned to the house, Callie walked into the drawing room to join the other guests before dinner. She wanted to go straight to Thorington, but some unusual reticence held her back. The warning in his eyes that afternoon had been real, though she didn’t understand it. But even if he hadn’t warned her, she couldn’t thank him publicly for what he’d done without inviting gossip that might ruin her.

When she had returned from their aborted walk to the cliffs, Lucretia’s butler had escorted her to a spacious room in the Georgian wing, one with a real bed, a pair of delightful chairs, and room for its own bath. It even had a dressing room. Mrs. Jennings was already unpacking Callie’s trunks, humming a happy little tune at their changed circumstances.

“Please send my thanks to your mistress,” Callie said to the butler.

“Miss Lucretia did not arrange this,” the butler said.

He had left without saying another word. But her maid handed her a note, sealed with red wax. Callie opened it to find two sentences scrawled across the center of the paper.

Lock your door and beware of fortune-hunters. I will suffer the rats.

It wasn’t signed. But she would have laughed if Thorington hadn’t been so foul at the end of their walk. He must have arranged to exchange rooms before they had gone out. Before he told her that he had no kindness left to give her.

But this wasn’t the gesture of a villain.

Thorington was just visible in the next drawing room, but she did her best to ignore him. Instead, she walked to one of the open windows and looked out over the lawn. It was better than looking around the room and realizing that she had no friends with whom to converse.

It was an odd reaction. She was accustomed to solitude. It had been nearly constant in Baltimore, since her father had died before she’d come out there and she’d had no female relatives to ensure that she was received properly by society. Captain Jacobs’ wife had escorted her occasionally, but her social status didn’t match Callie’s. Callie hadn’t minded at the time; she was more interested in shipping, and she didn’t mind that most of Baltimore considered her eccentric in the extreme. But there was so much she didn’t know about this world — so much she didn’t know about how to have a conversation that meant nothing and went nowhere.

If she was honest with herself, the possibility of finding friends and moving in society had been part of her desire to return to England. But if this endless line of dull house parties was the ton’s definition of friendship, she wasn’t sure she wanted any part of it.

“May we join you, Miss Briarley?” a woman said behind her.

She turned. Prudence, Lady Salford — the woman Thorington had, so very recently, tried to marry — smiled, her brown eyes seeming friendly enough. Madeleine, the Duchess of Rothwell, stood next to her, wearing an equally warm look.

“We thought you might like a bit of company,” Prudence continued. “It can be difficult to find one’s bearings at a party such as this.”

“Thank you,” Callie said. “But there is no need for you to put forth any effort for my sake.”

Madeleine waved a hand. “I’ll own up to being a negligent chaperone — you were nowhere to be found this afternoon. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be friendly with you.”

Did they know she had spent the afternoon with Thorington? Callie hadn’t made any effort to let Madeleine or Ferguson know about her excursion to the cliffs — the thought hadn’t even crossed her mind, accustomed as she was to setting her own schedule. And with Thorington’s sisters as company, Callie had thought she was safe enough.

But the ton had its own rules. And Callie didn’t know if she had just broken one.