Shameless (45 page)

“Oh, pooh! You are not talking about Cluny?” She laughed and looked up at him with a twinkle. “There was nothing in that! I wouldn’t have thought you the type to be jealous, Neil.”

“I know how to guard my own.”

“Indeed?” Something about that appeared to displease her, because she tossed her head. “Perhaps this would be the moment to warn you that I will not
be
owned.”

“Beth . . .”

The carriage pulled up to the door just then, and the others came out of the saloon to join them, and so no more was said. But the small dispute was not forgotten. Beth seemed determined to prove the truth of her assertion, and racketed about over the next few days with so many different suitors and such determined gaiety that Neil, observing, realized that such wildness was best left to spend itself unchecked, and set himself to presenting an unmoved facade in the face of much provocation.

Claire, for one, was not fooled. Three nights later found a number of their party at Almack’s, that preserve of the haute ton where only the most select could hope to gain admittance. The fact that they admitted
him,
oblivious to everything about him save his birth and title, was, to Neil, much in the way of a private joke, sort of like letting a tiger in amongst pigeons. But he was there, nobly playing his role, although he could not be said to be enjoying it very much. The rooms were crowded and hot, the refreshments abysmal, the company flat, and the main amusement, dancing, was not one that suited his taste. With the last notes of a reel still hanging in the air, Neil had just returned his dance partner, a debutante whose name he had already forgotten, to her mama. On his way to the card room, that place of refuge for reluctant dancers, his attention was caught by Beth, who was
as usual the lively center of a court of admirers. With white roses in the bright flame of her hair and the pearls around her neck and in her ears no more luminescent than her skin, she was breathtaking in a white spangled gown that clung to her shapely form in a most eye-opening way. Many of the old tabbies with which the room was rife eyed her with disapproval, and several younger ladies watched her with chagrin while whispering to one another behind their hands. Unless he wished to join her court—he did not!—he could do no more than admire her beauty from a distance as she laughingly bestowed a blossom each from the posy of white roses some admirer had sent her on two swains, before taking the arm of a third and allowing him to lead her into the set that was at that moment forming.

That unpleasant emotion—jealousy, there, he’d given it its name, though admitting he was troubled by it bothered him worse than all of the bullet wounds he had suffered combined—raised its ugly head again as he watched Beth glancing coquettishly up at her partner while playfully dusting something off the lapels of his coat.

Apparently Claire was not fooled by the bland expression he had thought he was maintaining while observing this most affecting tableau. Appearing beside him as he—instead of retreating as he had intended—folded his arms over his chest and took up a position against one wall to watch the quadrille that was just being struck up, she touched his arm. When he looked down at her in surprise, not having seen her come up to him, she nodded toward Beth, who was now pirouetting prettily in a movement of the dance while she laughed up at her partner. Annoyed at himself, he realized that he had been following the blasted chit with his eyes the whole while.

“She is used to being very popular, you know. You should not regard it.”

“I don’t, I assure you.”

Claire looked up at him rather shyly. Her beauty was undeniable, and it registered on him in that moment simply because he was a male, but having already been thoroughly dazzled by her sister, he noted it merely in passing as his gaze slid back to Beth.

Claire persevered. “Being married—she has always feared it, I think.”

“So she told me. Also why, a little. Forgive me, but from the sound of it you three had a wretched childhood.”

“Did she tell you about that? In the normal way of things, she will never speak of how we grew up. Only very rarely to me, or Gabby, who of course share her memories. You should consider yourself honored by her confidence.”

“I do.”

“Then, too, she has been enduring rather a lot at the hands of some of the high sticklers these last few weeks, you know. I have no doubt that she means to show them that she is just as ‘fast’ as they say. To do the very thing that she shouldn’t is absolutely Beth.”

Realizing that she was attempting to paint her sister’s behavior in the best possible light for him, Neil smiled down at her. “Are you trying to defend her to me? There’s no need. Her courage, and her defiance in the face of adversity, are two of the things I most admire about her.”

Claire met his gaze and smiled, too. “Do you know, I begin to think that you and Beth will do very well together, my lord.”

“I intend that we shall, Your Grace.”

“We are family. I am Claire. And I hope you won’t object if I call you Neil?”

Neil laughed. “I won’t, but I’d give a monkey to hear Richmond’s views on the subject.”

“Hugh is very protective of my sisters and me. As soon as he realizes that Beth will be happy with you, he’ll come around, believe me.”

Polite clapping broke out on all sides as the music stopped. With the best will in the world not to do it, Neil continued to watch Beth as she was once again swallowed up by a crowd of admirers. She was in great beauty, her eyes sparkling, her cheeks flushed, her bright head tipped a little to one side as she listened to something one of them was saying.

“How came you to let that dratted girl leave the house looking like that?” Lady Salcombe hissed. Looking very put out, she had just joined
Claire, to whom that remark had been addressed. Neil hadn’t even noticed her advent until he heard her fierce whisper. “Everyone is talking, and I declare I’m ready to sink with mortification.
Anyone
can tell that her petticoats are damped.”

Though he caught only a hint of the movement out of the corner of his eye, Neil was ready to swear that Claire committed the considerable solecism of elbowing Lady Salcombe in the ribs.

“Hush,
Aunt!”

He pushed away from the wall. Claire’s gaze turned to him, faintly apprehensive. He smiled reassuringly at her.

“Excuse me, ladies,” he said. “I believe I must not miss this dance.”

B
ETH DID NOT
CARE
that they were talking about her, the young ladies and their mamas and the starchy matrons and staid dowagers. She did not
care
about the sidelong looks or the whispers that seemed to follow her like a sibilant hiss wherever she went. She did not
care
that several ladies, including William’s odious sister, Lady Dreyer, had given her the cut direct when she had encountered them over the three weeks since she’d been back in London, or that that old cat Mrs. Drummond-Burrell, the haughtiest of Almack’s patronesses, had greeted her with a frosty stare tonight. She did not
care
about the rumors, which her cousins, Maud, Countess of Wickham, and her pie-faced daughters, Desdemona and Thisby, had been kind enough to recount during a morning call two weeks before. She did not
care
that, as Cousin Maud told her and Claire and Gabby with the concerned air of one imparting painful but necessary information, stories were flying about the ton to the effect that her bout with influenza was nothing but a hum, and that what had really happened was an elopement that had been thwarted, or, alternatively, that she had run away to a love nest with a
most unsuitable man and been forcibly brought back, or even disappeared briefly to bear a love-child, now given away.

She did not
care
that she now found herself watched, and judged, and disapproved of everywhere she went. She did not
care
that the highest sticklers were saying of her that she was not quite the thing. She did not
care
that the latest on-dit had it that her shocking behavior was why Rosen had not in the end come up to scratch, as well as being the reason why, despite the numbers of her suitors, she was, at the end of her third Season, on the verge of being left on the shelf.

She did not
care
that behind her back she was being called an outrageous flirt, a shameless baggage, and shockingly fast.

And most of all, she did not care that Neil, far from needing her help and guidance to find his place in the ton as she had thought he might, by now seemed at home to a peg in his new surroundings, and was causing quite a stir amongst the ladies to boot. In fact, Richmond House was quite overrun with females hoping to attach him. Cousin Thisby, with a malicious little smile, had been only the first of the ladies of Beth’s acquaintance who had taken care to warn her that people were saying that it would be a sad thing if she, at her age, with her reputation, were to set her cap at Durham, taking advantage of his presence in her household to try to compete with all the fresh young debutantes from whom the dashing marquis might choose a bride.

In fact, she cared so little for all of this that she was making devilish sure to be just as outrageous and fast as they thought her, and to encourage her admirers to the point where no one could suspect her of having lost her heart to Neil, as she was very much afraid she had done. Most of all, she wanted to keep her guilty secret from Neil. Her pride was too great for her to be able to endure the thought that he should know that she had somehow or other accidentally tumbled into love with him, unless and until she could be sure he loved her back. And he had given no indication of that.

Which is why, knowing herself to be the cynosure of a great many eyes, including Neil’s, she permitted Mr. Hayden to brush his fingers over her shoulders, which were laid bare by the small dropped sleeves of her prodigiously elegant gown, under the pretext that he
had clumsily dropped cake crumbs on them. Which is why she laughingly straightened the rosebud she had bestowed on the Earl of Cluny, which he had chosen to wear as a boutonniere. Which was why she agreed to dance the waltz that was just striking up with Lord Vincent Davenport, one of the ton’s most notorious rakes, who had been pursuing her in his desultory fashion for years.

Which is why she responded with a brilliant smile and a gay “You are too late, my lord” to Neil when he showed up scant seconds later to say in the most peremptory fashion, “My dance, I think.”

“Not at all,” he replied with aplomb, detaching her from Lord Vincent by the simple expedient of removing her hand from that affronted gentleman’s arm and swinging her onto the dance floor and into his arms.

“That was very ill done of you.” She gave him her quick frown even as he whirled her away. The feel of his strong hand clasping hers and his hard arm around her waist was so familiar that she could not help but relax a little, even though she was perfectly aware that their progress was being followed by a good portion of the people in the room. With her hand on his wide shoulder and his honed body only inches away, she felt strangely comforted. Strangely, because she had not known until that moment that comforting was what she needed.

“On the contrary, it was very well done,” he replied with a laugh. “I only hope your gentleman friend will not see fit to later call me out.”

“I doubt there is any fear of that.” Her grudging tone was leavened by reluctant admiration. The severe black coat and knee breeches that were the only accepted attire for gentlemen to wear at Almack’s suited his tall, broad-shouldered form to perfection. They certainly showed off his muscular frame, which was imposing enough to make it unlikely that Lord Vincent, many inches shorter and many pounds heavier, or, indeed, anyone else, would relish incurring his displeasure. For the rest, the arrangement of his cravat was elegant, and his shirt points, although moderate in height, were nicely starched. His swarthy skin contrasted most attractively with the snowiness of his linen. With his now modishly cut black hair waving back from his hard, handsome
face, he should have looked every inch the gentleman, and he did. But there was something in his expression, and bearing, that made him appear at the same time different from all the other gentlemen in the room. He looked too untamed for his surroundings, that was it, like a man who would be, to quote something recently said about Lord Byron, mad, bad, and dangerous to know.

But he was Neil, after all, and while unlike Byron he might actually
be
dangerous, he could never seem so to her. She enjoyed his company, and his conversation, and yes, blast it, his lovemaking. His advent into her life had changed it, and her, forever. As she had most reluctantly come to realize over the course of the last few weeks, in his arms was now the only place where she truly felt at home.

Not that she meant to reveal it to him or anyone by look, word, or deed.

“All the unmarried young ladies in this room are giving me dagger looks, you know, and wishing me at Jericho,” she added carelessly. “You are looking very handsome, by the by.”