Scandals of an Innocent (10 page)

“Lowell will come round,” Miles said. “He’ll speak to me, too. I’ll think of a way to smooth matters over.
It would not do to be at odds with my future brother-in-law.”

Alice glared at him. “This is all an entertainment to you, is it not, my lord!”

Miles shook his head. “On the contrary, Miss Lister, I am deadly serious. You have already seen tonight how determined I am to win your hand by meeting Lady Membury’s stipulations. I assure you that I will stop at nothing.”

They stood staring at one another whilst the tension seemed to spin out between them and the chatter and hum of the ballroom carried on unnoticed around them. Alice felt trapped and alone, captured by the intensity she could see in his eyes. There was such single-mindedness in Miles, such unwavering intent. When she had surrendered to his blackmail she’d had no idea of what she was unleashing.

“This frightens me,” Alice whispered. “I don’t like you. I hoped the terms of the will would make matters difficult for you.”

Miles did not smile this time. “Oh, they have,” he said. He raised a hand to her cheek and she felt his gloved fingers brush her skin in the lightest of touches. His hazel eyes were dark. “Be careful what you wish for, Miss Lister,” he said. “The terms of the will have made matters difficult for you, as well, because my honesty now compels me to show you how much I want you.”

He stopped and bent closer to her, and despite the crowded ballroom and the press of people about them and the curious glances, Alice had the absolute conviction that he was about to kiss her. His face was so close to hers that she instinctively closed her eyes. Immediately she did so her other senses took over. She
could hear Miles’s breathing, smell the tang of his cologne and the delicious scent of his body beneath it, a smell that went straight to her head and made it spin. She knew he was so close, only inches away from her, and then she sensed his withdrawal and opened her eyes quickly.

Miles had straightened up, swearing softly beneath his breath, and Alice turned to see a tall, rather gaunt woman bearing down on them with a determined look on her face. She had Miles’s hazel eyes and brown hair, and an air of piercing intelligence.

“Celia, I had not forgotten that you and Mama had asked for an introduction to Miss Lister,” Miles said. “I was intending to bring her over to you.”

“You were such an unconscionably long time about it that Mama sent me instead,” Celia Vickery said. She held out a hand to Alice. “How do you do, Miss Lister?”

“This is my sister, Celia,” Miles said. “I apologize in advance for her. She is quite terrifying.”

Celia Vickery gave her brother a look that would have stripped paint and then turned to smile at Alice. “I have been in a positive fever to make your acquaintance, Miss Lister,” she said. “I was desperate to meet a woman brave—or foolish—enough to accept my brother’s suit. You know that he is an inveterate fortune hunter, of course, so you can have no illusions about him. He has very little to commend him, I fear, other than the marquisate and his good looks, and you do not strike me as a ninnyhammer who would have her head turned by those. Are you sure you do not wish to reconsider?”

Alice glanced at Miles. His stance betrayed tension. He was watching his sister, not with the sort of accep
tance and affection that Alice had for Lowell, for example, but with a definite wariness.

Alice smiled back at the older woman. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Lady Celia,” she said. “I am sure you are right that your brother has little to commend him. I am accepting him out of a sense of pity, and in the unwavering belief that the Curse of Drum will carry him off before long, leaving me a widow.”

Celia gave a bark of laughter. “Pity! How marvelous!” She gave Miles a malicious look. “I do not believe any woman has ever pitied you before, Miles.”

“I am happy to take whatever Miss Lister offers me,” Miles said smoothly, with a speaking glance at Alice.

“Hmm, well, I do not believe you for a moment, Miss Lister,” Celia Vickery said, “but no doubt you have your reasons and I shall not press you. Oh, there is Mr. Gaines!” she added. “Pray excuse me. I really must go and importune him for a dance. It is rare enough for me to meet a man who is tall enough to partner me, but when he can also hold an intelligent conversation he is to be prized indeed.” She smiled at Alice, gave her brother a sharp nod and walked away.

“Pity,” Miles said thoughtfully as she walked away. “A neat setdown, Miss Lister.”

“I thought so,” Alice said. She watched Celia stroll over to Frank Gaines, who was standing with Mr. Churchward at the edge of the ballroom. Mr. Churchward was nursing a glass of lemonade and looking very ill at ease. Mr. Gaines was drinking some hot rum punch and looked entirely at home and entirely oblivious to the glances of disgust that the Duchess of Cole was shooting in his direction.

“I see that my lawyers are here tonight to ensure that
you behave in an upright and worthy manner, my lord,” Alice said. She could not help a smile. “How tiresome for you! Do you think they will follow you around everywhere for three months?”

“Very probably,” Miles said. “I am sure they will be disappointed by my blameless life. Mr. Gaines in particular is determined to catch me out and protect you from my dangerous ways.”

“Well, that is what I pay him for,” Alice said. She watched as Gaines handed his glass to Churchward, who looked as though he did not know what to do with it, and offered Celia Vickery his hand for the country dance that was forming.

“I think your sister is marvelous,” she said. She looked up into Miles’s face. “But tell me, does she really dislike you or is it merely her manner?”

Miles was silent for a long time, a rueful expression on his face. “Honesty compels me to say that I do not know Celia well so cannot answer with any certainty,” he said finally.

Alice was startled. “How is it that you do not know her?”

“Not everyone is as close to their siblings as you are to Lowell,” Miles said. There was a shade of expression in his voice that Alice could not place. “I have been away from my family a great deal and so have not had the opportunity to build a close relationship with them.”

“I did not realize,” Alice said. Once again she felt a treacherous stir of sympathy for him. She looked at him but his face was dark and closed, his expression impossible to read. “That must have been difficult for you,” she said slowly, thinking of how she had always
relied on the love and support provided by her mother and by Lowell in particular.

Miles shrugged. There was tension in the line of his shoulders. “There is no need to commiserate with me,” he said. His voice was terse. “I have managed tolerably well to survive without them.”

Alice frowned. “But surely it must have hurt you to be estranged from them?”

Miles’s hand tightened on her arm. “Miss Lister, pray do not endow me with feelings that I do not possess. I assure you that I am not hurt.” Then, as Alice shook her head slightly in disbelief, he added a little roughly, “Do I look vulnerable to you, Miss Lister?”

Alice looked at him and caught her breath at the hard, dangerous look in his eyes. “No,” she whispered. “You look…”
Virile? Menacing?

A man who was prepared to blackmail a woman into marriage for her money was hardly weak and defenseless, she thought, nor did he deserve any sympathy. Alice shivered, and knew that he had felt it.

“Quite,” Miles said. “Save your pity for a more deserving cause.” His grip on her arm was at the same time a warning and a gesture of possession as he steered her toward the corner where a gaggle of matrons occupied their rout chairs.

“You will allow me to introduce you to my mother, I hope, Miss Lister?” he said formally. “She is aware of our betrothal and as Celia mentioned, she is anxious to make your acquaintance.”

“I am sure she is,” Alice said. Miles had asked courteously, but she knew she had no choice other than to fall in with his wishes. His politeness was just for show.

Miles slanted a look down at her. “You will oblige me
by showing some enthusiasm for our betrothal this time, Miss Lister,” he said, his words echoing Alice’s thoughts.

“I shall muster what eagerness I can, my lord,” Alice said coldly.

Unlike her daughter, Lady Vickery was tiny, and Alice thought that she must have been a diamond of the first water in her youth. She was still a very beautiful woman, with stunning bone structure, a very slim figure and not a trace of gray in the rich chestnut hair that was exactly the same shade as her son’s. Her presence in the Granby’s ballroom was provoking some interest and the Duchess of Cole was looking very put out to have a rival for the role of
grande dame
of the neighborhood. Lady Vickery might only be a baron’s widow but that baron had also been a bishop, and Lady Vickery was the daughter of a viscount and had family connections to half the blue bloods of England. Faye Cole, on the other hand, might be a duchess now but had once been a mere Miss Bigelow, daughter of a coal magnate.

“My dear!” Lady Vickery grasped Alice’s hands tightly as soon as she was within touching distance, drawing her down to sit beside her. “You look like a young woman with a
great deal
of compassion. Can I not
prevail
upon you to marry my son at once and do away with all these tiresome conditions and requirements? For my sake, if no one else’s?”

Alice was laughing as she took a seat beside the dowager. “Yours is certainly an unusual approach, ma’am,” she commented.

“May I appeal to you as a mother?” the dowager persisted. “I am absolutely
desperate
for you to marry Miles, my dear. Can you not elope and confound the
lawyers that way? Three months is a dreadful long time to expect Miles to behave well. I am not at all sure he can do it. Besides, I must be frank and say that we are as poor as church mice, and we
need
you. We need you now! We are all in Queer Street and then there is this wretched family curse that is ruining all our lives and positively driving me to distraction! One cannot trifle with such dangerous things as curses, you know.” She looked at her son. “And though we all know that Miles is an out-and-out scoundrel, and it would be foolish to pretend otherwise, I confess I am still too fond of him to wish him to die horribly.”

Alice looked up at Miles. His expression was, she thought, particularly wooden. This time he met her gaze with absolutely no emotion at all.

“How interesting to know that your mother cares so deeply for you, my lord,” Alice said. “What have you done to deserve her love?”

Miles laughed harshly. “That is a mother’s privilege,” he said, “regardless of whether or not such affection is justified.”

Alice returned the grasp of the dowager’s hand. She felt a slight shock as she saw the depth of sincerity in Lady Vickery’s eyes. She had assumed that Miles had set his mother up to plead his case, but now she was not so sure. There was anxiety in the dowager’s gaze as well as hope and a rather touching appeal that Alice found difficult to resist.

“Dear ma’am,” she said gently. “As Lord Vickery’s mother you would naturally feel a degree of attachment to him. I imagine that most mothers know something of their sons’ faults and love them anyway.”

“I
knew
you would understand, Miss Lister!” Lady
Vickery said. “You are a delightful young woman. And you are
excessively
pretty, just as Mr. Gaines said that you were. Yes, really, much prettier than I had imagined.” She sat back a little and cast an appreciative look over Alice’s rose-pink evening gown. “You have good taste, too, for a provincial.”

“And very good manners, Mama,” Miles intervened smoothly, “unlike you and Celia, who have been distressingly blunt with Miss Lister.”

“What have I said?” Lady Vickery demanded. “Only what everyone else is thinking, I’ll wager, since Miss Lister was once a housemaid and could have been impossibly unpresentable—”

“I see my own mama approaching,” Alice murmured, entertained against her will by the discovery that the elegant and highborn Dowager Lady Vickery had such an unfortunate penchant for putting her foot in her mouth. “If you will permit, ma’am, I should like to introduce you to her.”

“Of course!” Lady Vickery said, beaming. “Of course! I am sure that she will agree with me that a marriage between you and Miles is greatly to be encouraged as soon as possible. We mamas must put our heads together and see if we can come up with a way to persuade Mr. Gaines and Mr. Churchward to overlook the trifling matter of the conditions….” She squeezed Alice’s hand. “You should know, Miss Lister,” she said, a slight shadow touching her face, “that it is not merely for his own sake that Miles wishes to pay off his debts and to evade the Curse of Drum. He has a young brother, Philip, who will inherit if Miles dies, and it would distress all of us unbearably if he were to be crippled by debt or, even worse, if the Curse of Drum fell on a mere boy.”

“Mama!” Miles’s voice cut like a lash and Lady Vickery jumped, as did Alice. “You have already importuned Miss Lister quite shamefully,” Miles said, moderating his tone. “Pray, say no more.”

The dowager drooped like an elegantly cut flower. “But, Miles, darling,” she protested, “we all know that you would positively
detest
anything bad happening to your little brother—”

“Mama, I beseech you. You have said
enough.
” This time Miles sounded really angry, and Lady Vickery looked hurt and downcast. Alice hurried to smooth matters over. Lady Vickery, she thought, was far too good for her son.