Sin and Sensibility (11 page)

He had no logical reason at all for being there, actually.

Nothing other than a desire—a
need
, damn it all—to figure Eleanor Griffin out. For Christ’s sake, he’d come within a breath of kissing her in her own morning room.

In Melbourne’s morning room.

It didn’t make any damned sense. He’d hunted dangerous game before, game already owned by another man—though she never seemed to be held too dearly by her captor. Friends, however, were another matter. He didn’t have many, and he didn’t betray them. Ever.

Melbourne had asked him to keep an eye on Eleanor, to keep her out of trouble and theoretically to report on anything that might be construed as improper. Within one day of that he’d seen her half naked and accompanied her home without a chaperone—either of which might have forced him into a marriage with the girl if anyone reported

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it—and then he’d promised not to tell anyone what had happened.

What Cobb-Harding had attempted hadn’t been her fault; of that he was certain. But she had gone to Belmont’s of her own free will, so he should have felt perfectly comfortable with relaying that fact to her brother.

His sense of fair play forbade that, or so he could tell himself, but after this morning he had a sneaking suspicion that his decision to keep this little surveillance going had nothing to do with fair, and everything to do with play.

Taking a long draw of his cigar, Valentine hung back far enough in the afternoon crowd of shoppers that all he could see of Eleanor was the curling ostrich plume atop her hat. Since he’d declared himself elsewhere, it wouldn’t do for her to discover him trailing thirty feet behind her.

And he wasn’t sure what the exercise was accomplishing, except to increase his level of frustration. Damn it all, if Melbourne hadn’t gone to him and he’d learned about Eleanor’s little rebellion on his own, he would have been first in line for the opportunity to educate her about freedom and sin and passion. Thanks to the duke, however, he’d effectively been gelded. Of course his head knew that, but the rest of him wasn’t paying much attention to logic and loyalty. The rest of him wanted to bed Eleanor Griffin.

“Deverill? What are you doing here?”

Valentine stopped as Zachary Griffin emerged from a men’s clothiers. “What do you think I’m doing here? he returned, putting an unfelt edge of annoyance into his voice. “I’m paying off my bloody debt to Melbourne.”

Zachary immediately dodged into the shadow of the Sin and Sensibility / 91

building. With almost comic urgency he sent a piercing gaze about the crowd. “She’s here?”

Shaking his head, Valentine moved forward again. It wouldn’t do to lose her now. “You have all the subtlety of a cannonball,” he commented. “She’s half a block ahead of us, shopping with Lady Barbara Howsen.”

“She said she would be,” Zachary admitted, falling into step beside him, “but she seems to be rather more devious than I’d realized. Did Melbourne tell you about her escape to Vauxhall?”

Damn
. “She told me this morning,” he improvised,

“when I called to ask after her health.”

“It’s
my
health I’m beginning to worry about,” Zachary countered. “There are rules of behavior, after all.”

“Ah. So I hear. Personally, though, I have to applaud her for catching the lot of you by surprise. Did you just assume she would never grow up and wish to experience what the world has to offer?”

“I don’t know,” her brother grumbled. “I did think she’d be more reasonable about it.”

“Women are rarely reasonable, my boy.”

Zachary walked beside him in silence for a moment. “I suppose we might have been a bit overprotective, but that’s not our fault. When she disappeared in Devon that time…I’ve never seen Sebastian so frantic.”

Valentine hid a frown. “She disappeared? You mean she’s done this before?” She’d seemed so genuinely lost last night. “Melbourne never said—”

“He knows about your dislike for family drama,”

Zachary cut in. “But it’s not like that. Nell was twelve, and Melbourne was what, twenty-three? Shay and I were somewhere in between. Nell used to do everything we 92 / Suzanne Enoch

did—swim in the lake, fish, fence”—he chucked, obviously at some memory—“and even ride astride. Anyway, one afternoon she took out Seb’s gelding, a big brute named Atlas. Forty minutes or so later Atlas came back without her.”

The ladies entered a sweets shop, and Valentine stopped in the alleyway. “What happened?”

“The grooms and I rode out, but didn’t see her along the riding trail she usually took. So Melbourne turned out the entire estate staff, and forty of us went looking for her. She’d been thrown before, and we’d taught her how to fall, so at first we weren’t all that worried. I wasn’t, anyway. But then the sun set, and we still hadn’t found her.”

Valentine realized his breathing and heart rate had accelerated, and he mentally shook himself. It wasn’t like him to become so involved in a story, to the point where he actually worried over the main participant. Especially not when the events had taken place nine years earlier and he knew the outcome. Eleanor was in a candy shop twenty feet away from him, for God’s sake. But he wanted to know what had happened. “And?” he prompted Zachary.

“We brought out torches and lanterns and kept looking.

By then Melbourne was hoarse from calling for her, and I think he was half-convinced that someone had kidnapped her and meant to ransom her for the family fortune. He would have given it to them.”

“That’s uncharacteristic.”

With a short grin, Zachary nodded. “You have no idea.

We looked for six or seven hours. It was after midnight before Shay fired off his pistol and the rest of us came running. He’d found her four miles away in a pile of leaves, asleep, waiting for daylight to head for home. Her damned arm was broken, but otherwise she was fine.”

He chuckled

Sin and Sensibility / 93

again. “She wanted to know what had taken us so long, and why no one had thought to bring her something to eat.”

Valentine smiled. “Sounds as though she was the only one of you with any sense.”

“Perhaps so, but we were more careful with her after that. She was missing for nine hours, Deverill. And I count those among the worst in my life.”

So he’d definitely done the right thing in not telling them about Belmont’s. He couldn’t imagine it himself, being so frantic to find someone that giving up the rest of one’s life and livelihood for their safety seemed a fair exchange. “Another reason not to have family,” he commented.

Zachary nodded. “For those nine hours I would have agreed with you. The five minutes after we found her safe, though, I wouldn’t trade those for all the gold in the East India Company’s coffers.”

Valentine snorted. “And I would be even more wealthy than I am now.”

“You say that, but wait until you have a family.

Everything will change.”

“I doubt it.”

“I’ll wager you anything that you’re wrong.”

“Ah, Zachary. I may be cynical, but I’m not a fool.”

And given how angry he’d been at Stephen Cobb-Harding last evening, he wasn’t willing to take that wager, anyway.

Chapter 7

“W
hy in the world do you want to attend a music-al recital, Shay?” Eleanor asked, hands on her hips. If Melbourne was trying to alter the conditions of their agreement again by sending along the Griffin private army, he was in for a fight no matter whom he’d designated as his ambassador.

“I’ve decided I need to increase my exposure to culture.

Shall we go?”

“Am I actually supposed to believe that?”

Charlemagne gave her an assessing look. “I suppose not. But you’ll have to forgive me if I want to make certain you reach your destination safely.”

“You will not—”

“After we arrive,” he said, running a hand through his straight brown hair and refusing to lower his gaze from hers, “I will sit at the back of the room and flirt with any unmarried females in the vicinity.”

At least her broad-shouldered middle brother was hon-94

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est. “And when I do the same thing with every single gentleman in attendance?”

A muscle in his lean jaw twitched. “I am providing transportation. The remainder of the outing is yours.”

Eleanor closed the distance between them, only two steps in the narrow foyer. “I will hold you to that, Charlemagne.”

Though she’d never admit it to anyone except perhaps Deverill, the idea of having someone she trusted seated close by had become absurdly comforting since the Belmont House disaster. She would test Shay’s word and forbearance tonight, because she intended on flirting, if for no other reason than to crowd Stephen Cobb-Harding from her memory. But now she would proceed with caution—or at least with her eyes wide open.

They took the coach to Lord and Lady Llewellyn’s.

Once they were through the door and into the ballroom where the recital was to be held, Shay did as he’d promised. Without a backward glance he crossed the room to converse with the host and hostess, leaving her to procure her own glass of punch. Eleanor took a deep, leveling breath. So what if her brother would see with whom she chatted? Other than telling Melbourne, there wasn’t much he could do about it.

“My lady, allow me.” Jeffrey, Earl Basingstoke, materi-alized in front of her, no easy feat for a man who weighed some twelve stone, and handed her a glass of punch.

“Thank you, my lord. You’ve read my mind.”

A smile folded into the wrinkles of the earl’s rotund face. “I always assume when a lady arrives somewhere that she will be in need of refreshment.”

The statement didn’t hold much logic, but at least it sounded harmless enough. “Do you often come to recitals?”

96 / Suzanne Enoch

“I’ve found them a fair way to judge the talent of young ladies. Don’t want to waste my courting on someone who can’t entertain, don’t you know.”

“You’re looking for a spouse then, my lord?”

He nodded, jowls wagging in agreement. “My mother, the Countess Basingstoke, has requested that I marry.

And she likes to listen to the pianoforte in the evening, so I would like to find a chit who plays well.”

“To please your mother,” she repeated, wondering how Basingstoke had escaped Melbourne’s notice. He was titled and had a nice income, and he certainly seemed to fit into the
dull as dirt
category of potential spouses.

Goodness, she was surprised that they weren’t already engaged.

The pleasant part of her agreement was that she could now spend time and converse with whomever she wished—not just the gentlemen who
would
be considered acceptable. “What would please
you
?” she asked. She generally didn’t have the opportunity to ask men more than what they thought of the weather. Humorously as she regarded Basingstoke, it was still a real conversation.

“Finding a female to bear my mother company and play—”

“—play the pianoforte,” she finished for him. So much for male insight.

“You understand. Do you play, Lady Eleanor?”

Good heavens
. “Not well enough to claim any skill at it,” she returned, shuddering.

She escaped the earl, but obviously by chatting with him she’d opened the floodgates. By the time the butler called for the guests to take their seats, and apparently seeing Shay’s lack of attention to her, seven other gentlemen—the sum total of unmarried males in attendance other than

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her brother—had approached to offer her punch or chocolate or their views on why she was by far the most attractive or most pleasant or most regal lady in the room.

Though she’d never been accosted in such a manner or in such volume before, she wasn’t so naive that she believed them. There was a reason Sebastian kept some of them away from her. They wanted her money, or their names joined with the Griffin standard. But for goodness’

sake, she didn’t need her brothers to decide whether they should be allowed to speak to her or not. True, Stephen had fooled her, but no one else would. And a few of these gentlemen, even the unacceptable ones, were at least amusing.

On the other hand, so much for her seeking out men with whom to flirt. It had taken all her energy to fend
off
their attentions, most of it so ham-fisted that she had to work not to laugh. Conversationalists, yes, but no potential husbands here tonight.

The first debutante took the low stage to a round of mild applause, and Eleanor settled back to listen. Miss Sanford looked terrified as she sat at the pianoforte, and Eleanor glanced at the girl’s preening mother. Little did Lady Sanford know that all her daughter needed was to make a good showing and she could very well end up as Lady Basingstoke.

“She can’t compare to you, Lady Eleanor,” another would-be beau, Lord Henry Anderton, said from beside her.

“Thank you,” she returned, pointedly keeping her attention on the performer.

“And your—”

“I’m quite thirsty,” she interrupted. “Would you please fetch me a punch?”

98 / Suzanne Enoch

Anderton happily scampered away, and Eleanor breathed a sigh of relief. Now she could simply listen.

“From sin to staid in one turn of the sun,” Deverill’s low voice murmured as he took the empty seat beside her. “How unexpected.”

Her heart hammered at his arrival, but she kept her gaze on the stage. And he thought
her
attendance was unexpected. “Lady Barbara’s older sister Mary is playing later. She invited me herself. But who invited you, my lord?”

“I’m not certain I
was
invited. I was driving by and saw coaches turning up the drive.” He shrugged. “No one warned me away.”

“They wouldn’t, not when this many young women are here looking for husbands,” she whispered back. “Even you might do for some poor chit.”

“Ah, so I’ve landed in a trap of some sort.”

She chuckled. “A very obvious trap, baited with punch and chocolate treats. And I thought you jaded.”

“Minx,” he drawled. “Any potential spouses here for you?”

Eleanor wrinkled her nose. “I’m only here for the chocolates, myself.”