My Lady, My Lord (18 page)

Her host had set aside a card room. Corinna found it, settled into a chair, and joined a game. She played deep and well and came away with a reticule much thicker from banknotes that others sacrificed to her cards. It was all an excruciatingly dull bore.

She rode home in silent solitude in her carriage, numb in the vicinity of her chest. Even her head felt empty. She could barely stomach looking at her bed, let alone sleeping in its luxuriously feminine softness. For the seventh night—since the night of the card game with Mr. Sparks—she undressed and lay down upon the divan in the dressing chamber.

At breakfast, which she took in the dining room, her father watched her soberly.

“I plan to go to the country within the next fortnight, Cora. For a short visit only.”

“But you will miss sessions in the House.”

“I’ve matters to attend to on the estate that I cannot delay. Would you care to accompany me?”

Corinna’s hand was unsteady around her cup of chocolate. She had not visited her father’s manor since the previous Christmas, and rarely thought of going. Her life was in London—her friends, activities, interests. Years had passed since she even considered the Derbyshire neighborhood as home. Nine years, to be precise.

According to Gregory, Ian was now in residence at Dashbourne. For how long he intended to remain there she had no idea, but the idea of meeting him in the country spilled apprehension through her.

“No, thank you, Papa. I prefer town, of course. But I hope you will return here soon. I enjoy your company.” She smiled.

He did not return the smile. “Perhaps you are in need of a change, Corinna. Your society here affords you great pleasure, I know, and you are an invaluable hostess to me, as I have said many times, and beloved and appreciated by many. But perhaps this melancholy is due to a sameness in your life of late. Too much stability is not good for the constitution or the spirit, I think.”

Corinna rather begged to differ. Until a fortnight ago, her life had gone along perfectly well.

“It is not precisely melancholy, Papa. Only a fit of the blue devils, as I have said. I’m terribly sorry to trouble you with my fidgets.”

“No trouble. Only, consider broadening your horizons, my dear. A little change never hurt anyone.”

Corinna chewed on her father’s words all morning while discussing the menu for her next salon with her chef, ordering flowers, instructing the housekeeper on a number of matters, and finally paying calls on friends. By mid-afternoon, she had not only chewed but also swallowed and digested his advice. She directed her coachman to drive to Upper King Street.

An assistant hurried to her as she entered the modiste’s shop, took her bonnet and pelisse, and made her comfortable in an overstuffed chair ribbed with white satin cord. Madame Jacqueline floated in from an adjacent chamber, a flurry of pink silks and rose-scented perfume.

“Ah,
belle,
what a great pleasure to see you twice in so short a time,” she said, gesturing for the assistant to pour Corinna a glass of ratafia. Corinna held up a palm to forestall the girl.

“No, thank you. I have come to work. I must not allow myself to be distracted,” she said, allowing the corner of her mouth to creep upward.

“To work?
Mais,
non, non,
my lady.” The dressmaker shook her head in disgust. Then comprehension came into her eyes. “To work? You wish me to make you many new dresses, in the fashion
à la mode
.” She clapped.
“Fantastique
.
”

Corinna nodded.

The Frenchwoman’s eyes narrowed
. “
In the black,
oui?”

Corinna’s grin became a smile. She shook her head. “No. In colors. Many colors.”

“
Colors? Colors! Oh,
mon coeur!”
She waved her hands about her cheeks as though to cool them, then called into the other chamber. “Bibette,
les catalogues
! Sylvie, the rose silk that arrived this morning.
Oui!
And the blue
,
the color of the sea. And the green, like the
Printemps
. The yellow,
aussi
. Bring them all! Oh,
mademoiselle,
this is the most beautiful day of my life. We will dress you in all the shades of the rainbow. When we are finished you will be splendid as a queen.”

“Thank you, Madame Jacqueline,” Corinna said, a tingle of excitement threading through her. “But I needn’t look like a queen. Only a woman.”

I
AN LEANED AGAINST THE FENCE
and watched Bucephalus shake his head before heading off across the pasture at a gallop. The day was cool, the sky blue, and the horse reveled in the pleasure of his freedom from the confines of travel.

If only shaking off a difficult experience were so simple for a man.

Difficult
. Complicated. Exasperating. Mystifying. Just like the woman who had caused it.

Ian pushed away from the fence, sparing a moment to glance at a nearby field of mares. Heads down in the grass, they remained entirely oblivious to the stallion’s proud cavorting.

Just like women. One woman. One damn blast impossible woman he couldn’t stop thinking about. Miles away and a sennight since he’d last seen her—her hazel eyes wide with the same confusion he’d felt in his gut every moment since then—and still he couldn’t get her out of his head.

He started toward the stable, the late afternoon sun warming the back of his neck.

It was over. While at the time it seemed like an eternity, it had lasted less than a fortnight. Now he was free. He needn’t think about Corinna Mowbray any longer, or concern himself with her activities, friends, reputation, likes, or dislikes. She played no part in his life, and he preferred it that way. If he steered clear of her, he needn’t ever see her again.

He came through the door into the long building. The scents of straw, horse, and wood polish surrounded him, strong and comforting.

“Scowling again, Chance? Didn’t your nurse warn that your face would stick that way if you weren’t careful?” Jag leaned against a stall door, his horse’s head draped over his shoulder. He grinned, reaching up to stroke the gray’s long muzzle.

“Have a care,” Ian grumbled. “I can just as easily throw you out as I allowed you to accompany me here.” He walked to Bucephalus’s stall and looked within, making certain all was prepared for him after his time in the pasture. The back-to-back travel to and from Sparks’s property had left the thoroughbred restive. It would be several days before he returned to his typical serenity.

If a horse could do it in several days, a man ought to be able to do it in less.

“Don’t make threats you won’t carry out.” Jag gave the gray a final pat and moved toward him. “Especially since I haven’t yet unpacked the thirty-year-old whiskey I picked up in Edinburgh last month. I suspect you could use it right about now.”

Ian ignored the comment, striding along the rows of stalls, mostly empty now with the horses in the pasture until just before dusk, when the lads would bring them in. Jag followed, stopping at the entrance to the smaller, old stable, the original building before Ian grew his business, still used for the family’s hunters, carriage, and saddle horses.

“It slipped my mind until now,” Jag said, twisting a single piece of straw between his thumb and forefinger. “I bumped into your brother that night after the Alverston ball.”

“Did you?” Ian loosed the latch on a stall door. Within, the big, black horse nickered a greeting. Ian still found it hard to believe Corinna had ridden the animal. But she didn’t lack courage. That much at least was true.

“He wondered why you’d turned in so early. Said Lady Chance was asking after you earlier in the evening.”

“My mother?” No doubt more unfortunate consequences of Corinna’s time controlling his speech and actions.

“Seems she wanted to speak with you about Greg.”

“He told you that?”

“I suspect he was feeling proud of himself. Apparently she wished to congratulate you on putting him in touch with Peel. She had hoped for that for some time. Young Gregory was so excited about it, I believe he wished to share her approval with you.”

“Yes, well, he’s still a cub.”

“You’ve done well with him. I couldn’t have raised my brothers the way you looked after Gregory.”

Ian ran his hands down Blackie’s forelegs, then across his withers. “He was already nearly a man when our father died, and I don’t deserve the credit for putting him up to contacting Peel. It wasn’t my idea.”

“Lady Corinna’s?”

Ian’s head came around.

“What were you and she discussing in the corridor at Alverston House, Chance? When Drake and I found you, the both of you looked like someone had told you Napoleon had risen from the grave and was marching on London.”

Ian draped an arm over the horse’s back. “If I begin to quiz you on your family’s business and the manner in which you carry on with ladies at balls, please feel free to put a pistol to my skull.”

“‘Carry on’ is precisely my point, Ian. What do you think you’re about with her?” Jag’s voice no longer teased.

Ian set a hard look on his friend. “I will not answer to you or anyone else concerning my dealings with women. It rather astounds me that you imagine I would.”

“You’re pulling a harder line than when we spoke of this a sennight ago, aren’t you? Did something change in the meantime?”

A sennight? Good lord, Grace had spoken to Corinna about her? After the Abernathy fiasco, no doubt. Damn and blast.

“I don’t like your suggestion,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter whether you like it or not. Have you merited it?”

“John, I warn you, I’m on the verge of throwing you off my property.”

“Go ahead.” Jag laughed. “But I’ve never known you to act foolishly before, Ian. Don’t begin now.” He shook his head, turned, and disappeared into the long building.

Ian barely noticed his friend’s departure. Instead, in his memory, words damningly similar to those he had just spoken assailed him. Here in this same stable nine years earlier he had uttered them to the girl who, with her mere presence had made the horror of his father’s funeral day bearable.

The
Times
reported that the Earl of Chance’s heart had failed at last. But everyone in the neighborhood and half of London knew he drank himself to death. From miles around they traveled that day, ostensibly to mourn alongside the family, but in truth to gawp and gape at Ian’s mother, his sisters and brother, and most of all him. At three-and-twenty, a town rouser and unrepentant gambler, they all believed he’d turned out just like his father—his father, the man who’d brought ignominy upon his family through a foolish act of supreme hubris.

Everyone expected Ian to do the same, to run Dashbourne further into debt, then into the ground. From tenant farmers to villagers, they all peered at him warily that day as they filed through the chapel, one eye on the old earl laid out on white satin, the other on the new earl sitting in the front pew, his head bowed. Not in prayer. Ian hadn’t spared a moment for the soul of the man who made his family’s lives a living shame for years.

For four years, to be precise, since the day his father had refused to meet at dawn the duke he’d cheated at cards and publicly, drunkenly insulted. He never apologized to the duke, either. For that, polite society had cut him and his family.

Ian had responded by carving out for himself a niche amongst the denizens of London’s darker streets, card sharps and dice runners, common prostitutes and courtesans down on their luck, as well as a handful of the
ton
’s hell-raising sons. He hadn’t been proud of that niche, but he’d been good at it. The indolent, easygoing pursuit of pleasure suited his mild temperament. More importantly, it had suited his need to be as far as possible from his father, who was shut up in his estate like a reclusive country squire.

When he went home to bury the man and claim his title, he expected the worst, and he found it: his mother stonily silent, nothing like the woman he remembered; his sisters panicking, afraid for their marriage prospects; and his brother stunned, still young enough not to fully understand matters. Despair and weary grief in their eyes, they had all looked to him for guidance.

That day, he saw Corinna the first time from across the lawn. Reaching for a bottle of brandy at the sideboard in the parlor, he had glanced out the window and there she stood with a group of neighbors beneath an awning. For a moment she stepped into the sun, gold sparkling in her rich brown hair, her lovely mouth smiling, and Ian’s breath had left him along with his pain for a fleeting moment.

For the remainder of the day he looked for her, stealing glimpses like a schoolboy. Her words at that ball years earlier had never left him, but neither had the absurd conviction that he wanted her of all people to know he was nothing like his father.

He started drinking in earnest after they carried the bier into the family tomb. By the time she found him in the stable after dinner, he couldn’t say what hurt more: the certainty that given a lifetime he could not possibly undo the damage his father had done, or that not a single person among his family, tenants, servants, or neighbors once expressed confidence in his ability to try.

Then she did.

And Ian, who had only wept once in his life, at the age of ten and in the presence of this very girl, simply couldn’t bear it.

The recollection of how he had spoken to her at that awful moment now drained the air from his lungs. He pressed his face against his horse’s warm neck, pulling in breaths of the animal’s honest, musky scent.

Jag was right. There was nothing honorable about how he treated Corinna. There never had been. She uniquely stole his measure, his ease, his peace. Last week, she had done so again in the most fantastical manner, unimaginable yet real. Afterward, he had rushed to Dashbourne to see to his horse’s recovery, but in truth to escape her.

But he couldn’t escape. She plagued him, she had always plagued him, and he wanted her. He wanted her exquisite body beneath his, and his hands covering every inch of it. Squirreling away in the countryside without any relief for his need would not solve that problem.

Seeing her again might. If he met her in society in the normal course of things, perhaps he could put into perspective the insane desire that kept him awake nights, remembering her body and wanting to possess it, this time with his own. Perhaps her allure would pale when placed beside the obvious attractions of women more suited to his tastes, women who sought to please a man rather than antagonize him.

He would return to London and his regular habits, and prove that the only reason Corinna Mowbray held such a stranglehold on his imagination was because for a brief while she had been his only contact with sanity. Not because she was actually innately appealing, or at least no more so than any other woman.

He thwacked his horse on the haunch. It protested with a snuffle, and he left the stall. He would find Jag, open a bottle, and offer up a toast to honor and decency. Thirty-year-old whiskey sounded like just the thing he needed to celebrate his newfound lease on his own life.

~o0o~

Nearly the moment Ian returned to town, the Marquess of Drake sent round word that he expected to meet him on Drury Lane that evening. Stoopie spent the entire play longingly ogling the red-haired girl playing Ophelia. After the final curtain, he begged Ian to visit the Green Room with him.

“What of the lovely Ivakina?” Ian asked as they made their way through the crowd of young bucks toward the fair Ophelia. Drake darted him a peculiar glance.

Ian looked about, endeavoring to hide his distaste. He’d never cared for actresses, dancers, or opera singers, painted and trussed like Christmas packages with nothing inside but wool ticking. Eventually, Stoopie retreated with a promise from the redheaded beauty, and they made their way to the street. The marquess called for his carriage. When he jumped up, Ian waved him off.

“I’ll walk.”

“Walk?” Drake screwed up his face. “Where on earth
to,
old fellow?”

“Evelina is hosting a gathering at her home this evening. It’s not far from here.”

“Going to your
sister
’s party?” Drake shook his head. “Still a bit dicked in the nob, ain’t you? Your visit to Dashbourne didn’t do the trick, it seems. It’s what Grace said, too.”

“I don’t have any idea what you mean, but I will allow the possible insult to pass unnoticed. Evening.” Ian walked the lamp-lit streets to his sister’s house.

Evelina, Lady Mallory, greeted him with surprise but warmth.

“Dear me, Ian,” she said with a smile, “If I had known you planned to come tonight I would have set up card tables.”

He bowed. “Charmed, I’m sure.”

“Everyone has been talking about how you beat that horrid man Mr. Sparks at Anna Alverston’s ball last week. Apparently polite society is cutting him simply because your impressive victory showed him to be nothing but a fake.”

“How hypocritical of polite society, then,” he replied. His sister laughed, but Ian’s shoulders prickled.

As anticipated, his mother was among the guests. She presented her cheek to be kissed. “I didn’t know you had returned.”

“Just today, ma’am.”

“And you are already here at your sister’s? How good of you. You made a short trip of it.”

“I had only a few matters to see to at the stable.”

“Does your brother know you’ve returned?”

“He may now. I believe, with your renovation of his flat, he’s putting up at my house currently.”

“Does Corinna know?”

Ian stiffened. “Does she know what?”

Her gaze sharpened. “That you have returned from the country, of course.”

“I haven’t the slightest notion. Now, if this examination is over, I will avail myself of a beverage. I see my brother-in-law still likes claret. What a relief. The fashion for champagne wants to rot a man’s teeth.” His mother smiled, but Ian sensed her continued regard as he moved away.

He remained at his sister’s home only long enough to satisfy his curiosity that tonnish events were indeed as excruciatingly dull as he recalled. His other sister, the Marchioness of Dare, appeared as he was departing.

“Oh, Ian,” she said, squeezing his hand, a mischievous glint in her blue eyes, “I have just come from the most horrid rout. Thank goodness Evie’s party was tonight. It gave me an excuse to leave the other early.”

“I am happy for your good fortune then, my dear.” He smiled.

Calista laughed, then her mouth twisted. “That awful Amabel Weston was there. I don’t know how you bore her for even the few months that you did, but I’m thoroughly glad it’s over between the two of you.”