London's Last True Scoundrel (17 page)

“As you see, I bore the brunt of their ire, too,” said Davenport, passing a hand over his jaw.

He felt stubble. “I’ll get your man to shave me while I’m here.”

“Why bother? You look like a pirate. Ladies love that sort of thing. Or so I’m told,” added Tregarth hastily, reddening again.

Hmm. Another place his mind refused to dwell, given Tregarth’s marriage to Rosamund.

“Be that as it may,” Davenport said, “I met a young lady in my travels.”

“Pretty?”

Davenport frowned. “What has that to say to anything?”

“A great deal, I imagine.”

“All right, very pretty. Exceedingly so. She’s a relative of yours. A Miss Hilary deVere.”

He’d discovered her name by questioning Trixie. He wouldn’t tell Honey that, however, and spoil the fun of annoying her with his pet name.

Tregarth looked blank.

“Sister to Benedict and Tom deVere. They have a run-down property in Lincolnshire, near Stamford. You must know them.”

The big man’s brow lowered. “Pair of wastrels, and I daresay their sister is no better.”

“But she is,” insisted Davenport. “And she’s here. I’ve brought her to stay with you.”

“You’ve
what
? Are you out of your mind? I don’t want any blasted deVere female in my house—”

Davenport held up a hand to stop him. “If you say anything that might lead me to plant you a facer, I shall break my hand, and I’ve got too great a sense of self-preservation to start a fight with you, in any case. Forget about the stable she comes from. This girl is as virtuous and pure as the driven snow. Which is why I had to take her away from that place.”

Seriously, he said, “She is your kin, deVere. She needs your help.”

“I won’t have her,” blustered Tregarth. “Rosamund is in a delicate situation. I won’t have anyone upsetting her.”

“So delicate, in fact, that she is downstairs as we speak, playing hostess to four hundred guests and in the pink of health, too. Look,” said Davenport. “I’m as fond of Rosamund as I could be. Do you think I’d bring trouble on her head?”

“You’re besotted,” ranted Tregarth. “Deceived. All the deVere women are the same. Trouble, with a capital
T.
”

“Just as all deVere
men
are the same, I suppose,” Davenport said smoothly, keeping a rein on his temper, but only just. “Uncouth brutes full of low cunning but without any of the finer feelings. Including compassion for a defenseless female, it seems.”

Tregarth sent him a blazing glare. “If she is virtuous and defenseless and all you claim, what are
you
doing with her?”

Trying his best to free Miss deVere from that very same virtue, was the answer.

An answer Davenport could not give. The need to possess Honey in the physical sense operated on a different level from the need to make sure she received her due: a London season. Right now, he focused on winning Tregarth’s approval of his scheme to the exclusion of all else.

Without a blink, he said, “I saved her from intolerable circumstances in her brother’s house. She had nowhere to go, so I brought her here. If you turn her away, she will be obliged to try to earn her keep. I daresay you know what that would mean.”

“Take her as your mistress,” recommended Tregarth. “That’s the best you can do to help her.”

“Ruin her, you mean.” Fury surged through Davenport at such callousness. The very idea of turning his Honey into a woman who had no choice but to move from one protector to the next was unthinkable.

A discreet and altogether delightful affair was one thing. Openly taking Honey as mistress was quite another.

He felt a twinge of dissatisfaction with that reasoning, but he didn’t pause to examine it too closely.

“Please,” he said to Tregarth. “Just meet her. As soon as you lay eyes on the girl, you’ll see what I mean.”

Tregarth threw up his hands. “Aye, I’ll meet her. But I can tell you right now, my answer will be no. And if you upset my wife over this, I will cut out your liver and feed it to the dogs.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

When Davenport went downstairs again, he was freshly washed, shaven, groomed, and dressed to the hilt in his own evening clothes, which Dearlove had procured with lightning speed from his town house a short distance away.

Davenport went in search of Honey, confident that she would have found somewhere below stairs to remain until he could fetch her again. He hoped she’d be a mite chastened by the time she’d spent there. He was still irritated with her for scuttling off in that craven fashion.

He found her, not cowering in a corner waiting for him as he’d expected but in the kitchens, of all places. Holding a rolling pin in one hand and gesturing emphatically toward the hearth with the other, she was at the hub of activity like a queen bee in her hive. Indeed, she had several drones running to do her bidding. Even the temperamental French chef seemed to treat her with flattering deference.

There was a smut of flour on her nose, and wasn’t that just adorable?

How had she managed it? He stood there, watching her, until he realized the room had fallen silent, and that everyone in it was watching him.

“Ah. There you are, Miss deVere,” he said.

Her gaze snapped to him. She dropped the rolling pin with a noisy clatter.

Someone opened the lid of a mighty cauldron and steam billowed around him. But he didn’t need the steam to feel a sudden, unmistakable heat. All she had to do was meet his gaze to make his insides sizzle.

Damn it, not now. He needed to set aside his lust for ten minutes and have a sensible conversation with the girl.

As her gaze took him in, a series of expressions flitted across her face. They resolved into a fierce glare.

“Excuse me,” she said to him, her lips thinning dangerously. “The staff are shorthanded, and I must—”

“Certainly, you must not,” said Davenport. He pointed at the chef. “You. Send to Davenport House for more staff if you need them. I cannot imagine what you are about not to have solved the problem earlier.”

The butler arrived on the scene then and spoke up. “Indeed, my lord, it will be attended to, I assure you. An accident to one of the cook maids had only just occurred when Miss deVere walked in or we’d never have accepted her assistance.”

“Do not blame them,” said Honey. “I gave them no choice but to allow me to help.”

“I am not blaming them,” said Davenport. He knew precisely who was responsible for this state of affairs. He knew also that servants weren’t likely to respect Honey for her generosity.

Honey’s chin jutted in mulish determination, but even she would not argue with him in front of the staff in a strange house.

“If you please, Miss deVere,” said Davenport, bowing. He did not wait to see whether she followed him but turned to lead her from the kitchens.

At the foot of the stairs, he took her elbow and hustled her into a deserted corner. “Just what did you think you were doing, mucking in with the servants like that?” he demanded.

“Take your hands off me,” she hissed. “You’ll soil your beautiful white gloves.”

*   *   *

Hilary stared doggedly up at Davenport, unable to keep the shrewish note from her voice.

“What?” The big, stupid oaf had the gall to knit his brows in a puzzled and slightly hurt expression.

Oh, she could have snatched up the nearest carving knife and stabbed him through his oh-so-elegant coat! How dare he leave her to fend for herself in this place while he went and dressed and groomed himself with an elegance that would rival Beau Brummell in his prime?

When she’d first laid eyes on him, lounging in the doorway to the kitchen, she’d thought him a dream come to life.

Then steam had billowed around him, like the clouds in heaven—or rather, the heat from another place entirely. He looked like a dark angel from the underworld, come to steal her away to his torrid lair.

Then, it hit her. He’d left her to grub about in the kitchens while he had turned himself into a confounded fashion plate.

“No doubt you are to attend the ball, my lord,” she said with a slight curtsy. “Do not let me detain you.”

She’d simply curl up in a corner with the spiders and die.

“Don’t be such a little fool.” He grimaced. “Do you think I want to go to the deuced ball? Rosamund won’t talk to me unless I do. I have to get her approval to the scheme, because I can tell you Tregarth is adamant he won’t have you.”

Though she’d half-expected to be turned away, the blow was severe.

“Oh.” She swallowed. “Well, then, I…”

Utterly at a loss, she passed a floury hand over her eyes. It wasn’t as if she’d placed her faith in Davenport, for goodness’ sake. Was it? Surely she’d not been fool enough to trust
him
to carry this off.

And yet she had.

The horrid sensation of being cast adrift in a huge city where she knew absolutely no one threatened to engulf her.

“I ought to look for somewhere else to sleep tonight, but…”

Good God, she’d not thought beyond her arrival, had she? What sort of idiot would not have foreseen this possibility, planned for it?

No, she’d been too desperate to escape from her brothers’ house. And far too trusting of this most untrustworthy scoundrel.

“My dear Honey, do try not to talk nonsense,” said Davenport. “I am togged up like this so I can dance the waltz with my cousin and convince her to let you stay. She is the softest touch imaginable
and
she can make Tregarth do whatever she wants. You will not have to go anywhere else tonight; you’ll see.”

He smiled down at her, and her heart gave a hard, slow flip.

She wished with all of her being that she could match him for ease and confidence. Most of all, she wished that she could wear a beautiful gown and glide into that ball on his arm. See him regard her with admiration—awe, even—instead of amused tolerance, as he did now.

If only she could make Lady Tregarth like her. If only she could persuade her guardian to part with some of the interest on her capital so that she might fund her debut.

She was in London, but that wouldn’t do her much good if Lord deVere exercised his powers as guardian and shipped her back to the Grange. Her brothers might well be scouring London for her by morning.

“Are you sure you’ll be able to convince Lady Tregarth to have me?” she said.

His teeth gleamed as the smile turned to a devilish grin. “My dear, any woman who waltzes with me is putty in my arms.”

She snorted.

“So sure am I, in fact,” he added, ignoring the interjection, “that I am now going to put you in the hands of the housekeeper. She’ll find a chamber for you and make you comfortable while I work my wiles on my cousin.”

When they emerged into better light, she noticed that his stubble was gone and that the bruising on his face now contrasted starkly with his bare, unmarked skin. His hair was brushed in gleaming dark waves but not puffed up and pomaded like many gentlemen’s coiffures. She liked that it still appeared natural, if tidier than she’d seen it hitherto.

Oh, but she was glad he hadn’t looked like this when she’d first met him. She would have been too shy to fight with him or even speak to him, come to that.

Now she said, “You will tell Lady Tregarth what we agreed upon, won’t you? No outrageous falsehoods or, or—”

“Never fret, my dear. I have this under control.”

He bent to kiss her forehead, as he would to a child. “Sleep well. We shall face them together in the morning. Tonight, you must get some rest.”

She felt unaccountably irritated with this benign, paternal dismissal. But she went with the kindly housekeeper, who did not turn a hair at being ordered to prepare a suitable bedchamber for an unexpected guest in the middle of a ball.

In fact, Mrs. Faithful seemed to accept Hilary’s kinship with the master as reason enough to welcome her. If only she knew.

“This suite belonged to the master’s sister, Lady Jacqueline,” said the housekeeper, showing her in. “Married now, and living in the country.”

The chamber was elegantly appointed and furnished with excellent taste. Hilary blinked, unable to imagine any deVere living in such exquisite luxury.

“It is beautiful,” she breathed.

“The mistress refurbished the entire house when she married the master,” said the housekeeper. “Lady Jacqueline is not one for frills and furbelows, as you might know. The fights they had, those two! But the mistress won her way in the end, and Lady Jacqueline loved the chamber in spite of herself.”

How could she not have loved it? thought Hilary. Every square inch?

Hilary wanted to lie on the thick carpet and make snow angels in the deep, luscious pile. She wanted to throw herself into the tester bed and sink and sink into the plump mattress. She wanted to swathe herself in the apple green curtains and waltz.

Not a speck of dust clung to any surface. Not a rent or a moth hole could be seen. No spiderweb of cracks crazed the intricately plastered ceiling.

Hilary felt as if she’d died and gone to Heaven.

And she resolved, then and there, that whatever she had to do to stay in this house, she would do it. Even if that meant bargaining with the Devil himself.

*   *   *

As luck would have it, Davenport returned to the ballroom just in time to claim his dance.

Rosamund’s blue eyes shot sparks. “I thought you were going to leave me without a partner,” she said. “What have you been about, all this time, hmm? Some flighty matron took your fancy, I daresay.”

“Not a bit of it,” said Davenport. “And if marriage has turned you into a naggy shrew, Rosie, then I wish you were still a maid. Without a partner, indeed.” He frowned down at her shattering beauty. “I’d wager you’ve never sat out a dance in your life.”

He thought of Honey and vowed to ensure she didn’t suffer the fate of a wallflower, either. But he had to see that there was a season and a ball to attend, before he worried about who would dance with her.

“That does
not
excuse your tardiness,” said Rosamund.

He eyed her severely, and a dimple peeked out beside her mouth. “Oh, do forgive me.” She sighed. “I
am
being a shrew. It’s just that I am so tired and out of sorts tonight. I cannot imagine why I thought it was a good idea to hold a ball when I look and feel like one of Mr. Simpkins’s hot-air balloons. Only not so light on my feet.”