So Wild a Heart (14 page)

So he had been in a foul mood when he received Leona's note telling him to call on her this evening, and the peremptory tone of the missive had set his teeth further on edge. When he got there, Leona had demanded all the details of the progress of his engagement with the American heiress, and when he told her that there was no engagement and never would be, she had stormed and pouted and wheedled. Finally, just to make her stop, he had agreed to escort her to the opera tonight, even though he had known she intended to use the time to try her powers of persuasion on him again.

He had been rather clever, he thought, in talking Stuart and another friend into attending the opera with them, promising that there was a fetching opera dancer who would catch their eye. While he had been congratulating himself on his cleverness, he had glanced around the opera house and his eyes had fallen on Miranda. He had felt as if a load of bricks had fallen on him. He had stood for a moment, stunned, unable to look away, cursing his bad luck that she should be there while he was with Leona. He reminded himself that he had no reason to feel guilty because he was with Leona. He wasn't engaged to Miranda and didn't intend to be, after all. There was no obligation.

Then he saw the man sitting next to her, and something twisted sourly inside him.
Had the witch moved on to her next victim?
He had turned away and sat down, pointedly ignoring her, but his brain would not do so. Throughout the first act, he kept thinking about the man and wondering who he was. He thought he would have at least recognized most of the peers the man's age—unless, of course, he was Cavendish's son, but everyone said the reason no one ever saw the man was that he was mentally deficient. He began to wonder if perhaps the man was not an aristocrat at all but merely some clever fortune hunter pretending to be Lord Somebody.
That would serve the wretched girl right!

At the intermission, curiosity had driven him to find out who the fellow was, so he hastily excused himself, ignoring Leona's startled glance, and made his way to his mother's box. Rachel had been more than willing to let him escort her to the Upshaws' box, but when they got there, he had felt ten times the fool. As soon as Miranda looked at him with those penetrating gray eyes, he had been certain she assumed he had come to see her.
Which, of course, was not the truth. Or not exactly.
Then, when he had discovered that the man was no one but Upshaw's secretary, he had been swept with relief, which was an even more foolish reaction than his initial one. It was almost as if he had been jealous, he realized, and that, of course, was completely absurd.
He wanted nothing to do with Miranda Upshaw, and it mattered not a jot to him whom she wed

He had appeared, he felt sure, foolish and inarticulate.
She,
of course, had been as cool as a cucumber, sitting there looking at him in that faintly amused, superior way. It made him grind his teeth all the way back to Leona's box.

Then, as soon as he sat down, Leona started in.

"Ravenscar..." she said, smiling in her catlike way. "Mr. Wyndham tells me that that is the American heiress's box you just went to. Is that true?"

"Yes. Rachel insisted I accompany her."

"And here I was being proud of you. I thought you were making a push with her." Leona picked up her opera glasses and peered through them at the box in question, as she had done every few seconds since Wyndham had told her that the Upshaws were sitting there.

"Don't be absurd."

"Damn! I cannot see her. She is sitting in the shadows. Why doesn't she move up some? Oh, bloody hell. Now they're turning down the lights."

Devin was relieved, but the start of the second act of the opera did not deter Leona. She moved her chair closer to Ravenscar's and leaned into him, whispering behind her fan, "You know, you should have seized the opportunity, Dev. Why else would you have gone over there?"

"Hush. The music's starting."

"Oh, piffle. As if you or anyone else here cares about the music. One only comes to the opera to see and be seen, you know. All this in between is nothing but a nuisance. Unless, of course, you play some interesting games." She smiled in the dark and moved so that her leg lay against Devin's.

He twitched his leg away impatiently. "Don't, Leona."

"Why are you in such a foul mood?" she asked crossly. "Is it because the heiress has escaped you? Even if she did, you know that you can get her back. Use your charm."

"I don't want her back!" he snapped.

"Oh, Dev...for me?" Leona pouted prettily.

"If you had met this woman, you wouldn't be so insistent," he growled.

“Really... are you saying that I should be jealous of this colonial golden goose?" Leona's laugh was rich and confident. "I think I can stand the competition." She placed her hand on his thigh. Her fingers began to walk up his leg. "Wouldn't it be pleasant to have all that money? We could do whatever we please." Her creeping hand moved ever closer to the joinder of his legs.

"Dammit all to hell!" Devin jumped to his feet and strode out of the box, leaving the other occupants staring after him in amazement.

******************

Miranda saw Ravenscar abruptly leave Lady Vesey's opera box. Intrigued, she rose and slipped quietly out of their own box. She saw him trotting down the stairs at the far end of the corridor, so she followed silently, catching sight of him just as he pushed open one of the great outer doors and strode into the night. She was not sure exactly what impelled her, but she followed to the door and pushed it open. Something inside her wanted to call out to him, to bring him back to her, but she managed to clamp her lips shut on the impulse.

As she watched him, Dev paused a few steps above a young girl who was sitting on the bottom steps outside, two large baskets of flowers on either side of her. She was a flower girl, come to ply her trade at the closing of the opera, hoping to interest a few gentlemen in buying nosegays for their ladies. She was young, no more than ten or twelve, Miranda would guess, and she was pitifully thin, her hair straggling lankly down beside her face, skinny ankles sticking out from beneath her dress. Miranda felt a tug of pity for her, as she always did for the flower and food vendors.

Dev dug into his pocket and pulled out a few coins, and Miranda wondered, with a spurt of jealousy, if he intended to purchase a bunch of flowers to take back inside to Lady Vesey. However, he only tossed the coins into the girl's basket and started on his way past her. Miranda smiled to herself, pleased that he had taken pity on the girl.

At that moment, another man, well-dressed and obviously inebriated, came slanting down the opera house steps on a path that would cross Dev's. As he neared the flower girl, he stumbled and knocked into the girl's basket, sending all the flowers in it flying across the steps. The girl cried out in consternation at the scattering of her livelihood. The drunken patron paid no attention, merely crunched on through the scattered flowers, demolishing most of them.

Outrage rose in Miranda at the man's careless destruction of the girl's flowers, and she started out the door, about to yell at him. But then she saw Dev cross the few feet to the man and catch him by the collar of his jacket. He spun the man around, and though Miranda could not hear, she saw him deliver a terse message to the man, nodding back toward the flower girl's crushed posies. The man looked at the mess he had created and sneered.

Ravenscar delivered a short jab straight to the other man's solar plexus, and the man doubled over. Devin jerked him back upright by his collar and spoke again. This time the man dug in his pocket, pulled out a bill and handed it to the girl. Dev gave him a nod and released him. The man continued on his way. The girl took the bill and tucked it quickly into her pocket, gratefully spewing out thanks to Ravenscar. Devin merely gave her a smile and went on his way.

Miranda watched his retreating figure until he was out of sight, her eyes alight and a smile curving her lips. Then she turned and rejoined her family inside their opera box.

_{Chapter 8}

Irritation sent Dev several blocks away from the opera house before he even thought of where he was going. He certainly did not want to return to his house. Stuart and one of his friends were back at the opera with Leona—
Good God, there would be hell to pay for walking out on her like that
—and even if they had been free, he didn't feel like seeing them. Nor did the thought of any of his usual haunts—taverns, gambling dens, bordellos—appeal to him. He simply was not in the mood for entertainment. He wanted...he wasn't sure what. To be free from the demons that haunted him, he supposed. The specter of poverty and ruin, the threat of a loveless marriage to a woman who held him in contempt, the prospect of treading this useless path of his life forever...

Perhaps it was the gloom of his thoughts that turned his feet in the direction of his brother-in-law's palatial home. He soon reached the gate of the mansion, which, in its parklike grounds with a high stone wall all around, took up a large chunk of the fashionable area of London.

Once, hundreds of years ago, this wall and gate had been guarded by the Duke of Cleybourne's soldiers. Now it was merely a footman who stepped out of the small sentry box inside the gate and peered through the iron bars at him. "Oh! My lord. Been a while since we've seen you here. Just a tick, sir."

The man bustled out with a ring of keys and opened the lock, pushing the wide gate back far enough that Devin could step through. "His Grace will be that happy to see you, my lord," the servant said chattily. Richard's servants were notoriously fond of their employer and loyal to him. Devin's mother deplored their familiarity, but Devin found it rather pleasant. It was a trifle odd that Richard, whose title was one of the oldest and highest in the land, was the least high in the instep of any peer Devin knew.

The footman who answered the front door to Devin's knock also knew him and greeted him with even more delight, escorting him immediately to Richard' s study. Devin found Richard seated beside the fire, gazing into the flames. There was no other light in the room, and the firelight lit Richard's face oddly, casting deep shadows across his cheeks, giving him an even more saturnine appearance than usual.

At the sound of Devin's footsteps, he turned, saying gruffly, "What the devil do—" He stopped when he saw Devin, and a smile creased his face. "Dev! Come in, come in." He stood up, motioning to the footman. "Light some of the lamps, Harper."

"Yes, Your Grace," Harper replied happily, going around to light the wall sconces, as well as the oil lamp on the small table beside the Duke's chair.

Devin now understood the reason for the servant's delight in seeing him; obviously Richard had been sunk in one of his glooms this evening, and the footman hoped that Devin's visit would bring him out of it Richard had once been a man who enjoyed life— of a more serious nature than Devin, of course, but still a man who enjoyed a party or a night spent touring the taverns with his friends. However, ever since the death of his wife four years ago, he had become something of a recluse. He shunned his country estate, where the fatal accident had occurred, and lived in the London ducal mansion, but despite being in a thriving city, he rarely went anywhere or saw anyone, except for the times when some friend or in-law ventured in to see him. Sometimes he even refused to receive visitors, which worried his loving servants terribly.

Dev remembered a little guiltily that he had not been to call on Richard in several weeks. He recalled now that Rachel had said, frowning, that Richard seemed to be getting worse, not better, as the months and years passed. Richard, like most men of Devin's acquaintance, was not the sort to talk about his grief. Consequently, he and Devin rarely broached the subject of Caroline's death, though they had been the two men who loved her most on earth.

Devin glanced involuntarily now at her portrait. It was one he had painted himself a few weeks before Caroline's marriage to Richard. She had asked him to do it, wanting it as a present for her future husband. It had hung over the fireplace in the great room of their estate house, but Richard had brought it here, where it dominated one wall of the study. In the painting, Caroline was smiling in that dreamy, almost sleepy way she had, a young woman on the verge of her adult life and expecting to enjoy it to the fullest. She was dressed in the elegant satin gown she would wear at the wedding, and she wore the famous parure of Cleybourne emeralds: a circle of emeralds and diamonds that clung to her throat, dangling a pendant of a single huge emerald; earrings of perfectly matching emeralds centered in tiny diamonds; a bracelet of linked emeralds; and even a dainty diamond tiara decorated with five exquisite emeralds. It seemed to be an extravagance of jewels that would have overwhelmed the young girl wearing it, but Caroline was tall, like most of the Aincourts, and possessed of a vivid beauty. Nestled in her raven hair and caressing her pure white skin, complementing the brilliant blue of her eyes, the jewels looked magnificent and correct.

Devin had captured her happiness and even that hint of smugness in her smile and eyes that indicated that she knew she was making a splendid marriage to a man who loved her above all else. Her skin gleamed in the pale light that poured over her through the window beside her, and her eyes were so alive one almost expected to hear the girlish giggle that was her trademark.

"It is the most beautiful portrait I have of her," Richard said, following Devin's gaze. "That's why I have it here, where I can see it the most." He looked on past the portrait to the smaller one of a young girl beside it. "I only wish I had had you draw one of Alana. The artist couldn't do her justice—she was always moving about, you know."