Lord Perfect (12 page)

"I shouldn't see you here. What could possibly
bring you to Soho?"

"You," he said. "I have been looking for
you for hours. But I shall not keep you standing in the rain while I
explain myself. Let us make a dash to St. Anne's Church for a
hackney. We can speak more comfortably then."

Involuntarily, her gaze shot southward again, to the
church.

Oh, it was tempting.

But riding in a closed carriage with a man who turned
her into a witless sixteen-year-old was asking for trouble.

"No, thank you," she said. "I think it
best if we travel in different directions." Once more she set
herself walking eastward.

She was distantly aware of a rumble. In the next
instant, her feet left the ground, and before she could make her
brain believe it was happening, he had scooped her up and was
carrying her down Dean Street.

They'd reached Compton Street before she recovered her
wits and untangled her tongue. "Put me down," she said.

He kept on walking.

He was hot even breathing hard.

She was. The arms bracing her were like iron bands. His
broad chest and shoulders blocked out the wind and much of the rain.
His coat was damp, but warmed by the body under it.

While she had realized he was fit—the cut of his
clothes had told her so—she'd greatly underestimated his
strength. She knew he was tall and well proportioned. She hadn't
realized, though, how very much of him there was.

Too much.

Overpowering.

An image came into her head of warriors in armor
storming castles, slaughtering the men, and carrying off the women.

His ancestors were such men.

"Put me down," she said. She squirmed.

He only tightened his grasp, crushing her more closely
against him.

She grew hot and addled. She knew she ought to fight,
but her will was ebbing away. Or maybe what she felt was her morals
disintegrating.

Belatedly she recollected their surroundings: a public
byway. If she renewed her struggles, all she'd do was attract
attention.

People had clustered in doorways for shelter. They had
nothing to do but stare at passersby.

Someone might recognize him. Or her. If word of this got
out…

It did not bear thinking of.

She kept her head down and tried to occupy her brain
with composing devastating set-downs and plotting retribution. She
found that her mind had gone on holiday and left her body in charge.

Her body was warm and sheltered. It wanted to get closer
to the stronger one, the source of heat. It wanted to crawl inside
his coat.

Luckily, they had only a short distance to cover, and he
walked briskly. In a few minutes, they reached the hackney stand.

"The lady's slipped and hurt her foot," he
told the driver at the head of the queue. "I should prefer to
travel with a minimum of sudden starts, stops, and bumps, if you
please." He tossed her into the vehicle, growled something else
at the driver, and climbed in beside her.

"I'm sorry about that," he said, when the
vehicle was in motion. "Well, not completely sorry." His
mouth curved a very little.

She tried to think of a cutting answer. Her mind was
sluggish. Her heart, meanwhile, was beating dementedly.

"I was too impatient, perhaps," he said. "Yet
it seemed absurd to stand in the rain, arguing with you. I only
wanted to make an offer."

She stiffened. This she could
understand, all too well. This was not confusing. The heat drained
away, leaving her chilled, and she said, with all the icy dignity she
could muster, "A
what
?"

He made a dismissive gesture. "Not
that
kind
of offer," he said.

"It would seem that you've mistaken me for someone
who was born yesterday, my lord," she said.

"It would seem you are completely blind to the
obvious, to suppose I should deceive you about such a thing," he
said.

"I am not blind," she said.

"You are not using your head," he said. 'Try a
little common sense. I am not a younger son. I haven't the luxury of
being the family scapegrace. That is Rupert's job. My world is a
small one, where liaisons are nearly impossible to keep secret. They
might, however, be kept quiet, if they are too boring to interest the
gossips and the scandal sheets. You are much too exciting. If I
became intimately involved with you, I should be made a public
spectacle—as Byron was, but worse. The caricaturists would be
thrilled. I should not be able to stir a step without seeing my
exaggerated image, captioned with what passes for witticism these
days. The prospect does not enchant me."

Bathsheba was aware that Lord Byron had been ridiculed
mercilessly. She had seen some of the cruel caricatures.

With Rathbourne, it would be worse. The higher a man
stood in the public eye, the keener the world's delight in his fall.

"Oh," she said, deflated. Disappointed, too.
For a moment she had almost believed that she made Lord Perfect as
witless and immature as he made her.

"My offer is a respectable one," he said. "I
know of a set of rooms in Bloomsbury that might suit you. The
landlady is a war widow. The rent should be within your means, if I
have calculated correctly. If one multiplies one-fourth the rate you
charge for Peregrine by your eight students on Mondays and—"

"You
calculated
my income?" she said.

He explained that much of his parliamentary work
involved computation. Consequently he understood what a budget was
and how to balance it. He was aware, furthermore, that some people
had to live on very little money. He and a few colleagues had founded
enterprises aimed at bettering the condition of war widows, veterans,
and others for whom neither the government nor the parish provided
adequately or at all.

"Oh, yes, your famous philanthropy," she said,
her face burning. She did not want to be one of his charity cases.

"This is not philanthropy, madam," he said
coldly. "I am merely saving you the trouble of finding Mrs.
Briggs on your own and wasting time roaming unsatisfactory
neighborhoods like Soho. The rest will be up to you. Would you like
to see the place?"

The chill tone was calculated to subdue the listener. It
made Bathsheba want to shake him. She had her pride, after all, which
rebelled at being treated like an unintelligent, lesser being. Still,
Olivia's future was more important than her mama's pride.

Bathsheba swallowed it in a gulp. "Indeed, I
would," she said.

She had not understood the directions he'd given the
hackney driver, and the rain was so heavy now that the world outside
was a blur. When the hackney stopped, and Rathbourne alit to help her
out, she must simply trust that he was taking her to Mrs. Briggs of
Bloomsbury Square, and not his private love nest.

She could see that the blood of his savage ancestors
still ran in his veins. She could see that he was a good deal too
accustomed to telling others what to do and too little used to their
contradicting him.

She had trouble, however, seeing him as one who lured
women to their undoing through deceit and trickery.

To lure a woman, all he had to do was stand there,
looking bored with being perfect.

Her instincts proved correct. Mrs. Briggs turned out to
be a respectable lady of middle years. The rooms she offered, while
far from luxurious, were neatly kept and furnished. The price was a
bit higher than Bathsheba liked, yet lower than what she'd assumed
she must pay in this part of London. Within an hour, all was settled,
and she was in another hackney with Rathbourne, on her way home.

En route, he gave her financial advice. His assuming
that she was financially incompetent was annoying, but she supposed
he couldn't help it. He was in the habit of arranging the lives of
the less fortunate. In any case, he had experience with this sort of
thing, and only a fool would refuse to listen.

She was surprised, though, when he took out one of his
calling cards and on the back wrote the names and addresses of shops
to whom she ought to bring her watercolors and drawings. Were her art
hanging in Fleet Street or the Strand, it was more likely to attract
those with the means to purchase it, he told her. Moreover, she must
raise her prices. "You do not value your work sufficiently,"
he said.

"I am a complete unknown," she said. "I
do not belong to any prestigious art society. One must value the work
accordingly."

"Your name, as I pointed out earlier, is far from
unknown," he said. "What you are is naive."

She almost laughed. She had lost the
last of her naivete by the time she was ten years old, thanks to her
parents. "I am two and thirty, and I have lived everywhere,"
she said. "While I may not have seen
everything
,
there is not a great deal I haven't."

"You don't seem to understand your potential
customers," he said. "This makes me wonder if you are truly
one of the Dreadful DeLuceys. You have failed to take advantage of
common human weaknesses. It has not occurred to you to exploit your
notoriety. You seem unaware that the more expensive an item is, the
more people value it. Such is the case, in any event, with
Fashionable Society. When you set a rate of quadruple the usual to
teach Peregrine, my respect for you increased proportionally."

It was no use trying to read his face. Even if his were
not a tell-nothing countenance, the light was too dim. She could not
decide whether or not he was being sarcastic. He sounded bored.

"I advise you to make them pay," he said. "You
cannot change Society. Despite my privileged position, I cannot,
either. Even I must live according to the rules, as I said before. It
is tiresome, but the price of breaking the rules is excessive. In
addition to causing my family distress, I should lose the respect of
people necessary to passing bills, instituting reforms, and
supporting various other efforts that give my life purpose. You have
already paid a high price because your late husband broke Society's
rules. What do you owe the Beau Monde, then? Does it not owe you? Why
should you not require ample payment for the work that supports you
and your daughter?"

The bored drawl could easily make one believe the
subject was merely tedious to him. He sounded the way he'd looked in
the Egyptian Hall, at the moment she'd first seen him: the very model
of aristocratic ennui.

The carriage interior was small, though, and she sat too
near him not to sense something amiss: a tension in the air, perhaps.
Or maybe it was the way he held his head and shoulders. Whatever it
was, she doubted that the man on the inside was fully in harmony with
the one on the outside.

"Perhaps I have fallen into a bad habit of being
humble," she said. "How shocked Papa and Mama would be!"

Neither of her parents would have hesitated to exploit
others' weaknesses. Neither of them knew what a scruple was.

'There is that," he said. "Another trouble is,
you are not a Londoner. You do not know how to take proper advantage
of the place. Like most of my acquaintance, you know your bits of
London, but you do not know her in all her infinite variety."

"London is like Cleopatra to you?" she said,
smiling at the image of the bored aristocrat fascinated with this
vast, smoky metropolis. " 'Age cannot wither her, nor custom
stale her infinite variety.' Is that your view?"

He nodded. "You know your Shakespeare," he
said.

"But not my London, it would seem."

'That would be impossible," he said. "You have
lived here for how long? A year?"

"Not quite."

"I have spent the greater part of my life here,"
he said. "I am obnoxiously knowledgeable."

He proceeded to demonstrate, with a detailed description
of the environs of Bloomsbury, including the shops and vendors worth
patronizing and those best avoided.

They reached the Bleeding Heart Tavern all too soon for
Bathsheba. She could have listened to him for a good deal longer. He
loved London, clearly, and the picture he painted transformed it for
her. This afternoon it had seemed a cold fortress, shutting its gates
to her. He opened it up, and turned it into a haven.

That was not all he'd done for her this day, she
realized. A short while earlier, she'd felt bowed down by the weight
of her cares. Rathbourne had lightened them.

This had never happened to her before.

Her parents spent their money as fast as they got it,
and went on spending when there wasn't any. When creditors and
landlords became difficult, Mama and Papa packed up and moved,
usually in the dead of night.

Though Jack was far more honorable, he was no more
helpful. He had loved her passionately, but he was hopelessly
irresponsible. The practical problems of everyday life were
completely outside his experience. He couldn't see them, let alone
analyze and solve them. He had no notion of the value of money. The
concept of living within one's means was beyond his comprehension.