Stroke of Genius (21 page)

“No need,” Crispin’s voice sounded behind her. “This one’s mine.”

Jasper Washburn laughed. “Very funny, Hawke. You can’t mean to make a fool of yourself on the dance floor with that cane of yours.”

Crispin bared his teeth in a feral smile. “One man’s cane is another man’s club. But if you doubt my dancing abilities, I invite you to sit down and watch. Shall we, Grace?”

He wheeled around with Grace in tow toward the dance floor where couples were lining up to begin the cotillion.

“Crispin, you don’t have to do this to impress me,” she said through a clenched jaw. She didn’t want him embarrassed by attempting something he couldn’t possibly do.

“Have a little faith in me, Grace,” he said. “I may not be the smoothest dancer in the ballroom, but if I can make it up those infernal stairs, I can make it through a few sets.”

He swung her around and dipped in a low bow, one leg extended courtly fashion. He hooked his walking stick over one elbow. Grace responded by setting her feet in fifth position and dropping an equally low curtsey.

Fortunately, the tune was a sedate one and the lead couple set the pace with leisurely figures. Crispin kept up admirably. He smiled at Grace on each pass, his grey eyes darkening to gunmetal.

“I need to see you,” he whispered in her ear when they clasped hands and did a canting turn.

After she backed into her place in line, she cocked her head and spread her hands at her side as if to say, ‘
You’re seeing me.’

When they met in the center again, he said softly, “In private.”

She blinked hard. Everything seemed to be going so well.

“Sounds serious,” she whispered back on the next turn. “When?”

‘Tonight,’
he mouthed over the heads of the couple who sashayed down the center of the two parallel lines.

She frowned at him. He flashed an over-sized smile, signaling she shouldn’t frown. She turned the corners of her mouth up in response.

‘How?’
she mouthed back.

The next time they came together for a turn he leaned toward her and murmured, “Leave your window open.”

Her eyes flared wide and she shook her head.

He raised one eye brow and nodded.

“Impossible,” she hissed on the next close turn.

“You mean improbable,” he said pleasantly as they separated. “What I suggest is hardly impossible.”

Dancers on either side of them looked askance at Crispin since he’d spoken in a normal tone of voice. In the dipping, turning line where flirtation took on a stylized gloss, speaking glances were common. Speaking dancers were not.

Grace tightened her lips in a firm line at him, willing him to be quiet. She’d had such a glorious night, she didn’t want anything to ruin it at the last moment. And if someone overheard Crispin Hawke insisting she leave her window open for him, her success with the
ton
would be short-lived indeed.

He arched a questioning brow at her and she knew he hadn’t given up. Whatever he needed to say to her must be important for him to ask this of her.

Urgent, even.

‘Trust me,’
he mouthed.

There was a leap of faith! With a roll of her eyes, she gave him a quick nod.

She regretted it almost instantly. If they were discovered alone in her bedchamber, she’d be hopelessly compromised. Ruined beyond redemption.

But there was no way to take the nod back.

Especially not when the smile on his devilishly handsome face made her heart do a double-time jig.

Chapter 22

‘A prophet is not without honor except in his own country,’ or so the Good Book tells us.

And an artistic genius gathers a few enemies close to home as well.

Jasper Washburn glowered at Crispin Hawke’s broad back and shoulders. The man was making a damnably credible job of the slow cotillion, more’s the pity. If Washburn had an extra quid to spare, he’d pay the fiddler to switch to a lightning fast reel. Jasper would have loved to see Crispin Hawke take a tumble and land on his presumptuous arse.

“It’s a shocking thing really, don’t you think, Lord Washburn? The way the patronesses relax the rules for the likes of Crispin Hawke,” a feminine voice said at his elbow. “Oh, I know he’s supposed to be all the rage, but it makes one wonder, doesn’t it?”  

Jasper turned to look at her. Thin-faced and bony-nosed, the woman reminded him of an ill-begotten colt that hadn’t grown into its looks yet. But while there was hope a colt might improve in time, given her age, this lady never would. Jasper recognized her. It was hard to expunge those deep crow’s feet and frown lines from one’s mind.

“Lady Sheppleton, how lovely to see you again.” He bowed over her offered hand. Her flesh radiated cold even through her glove. “Will you be attending Lord Dorset’s horse show again this fall?”

    “No, I convinced my husband to give up Thoroughbreds altogether. All he could talk about were which stallions were due to cover which mares. So very tiresome.” Lady Sheppleton waved her fan as blithely as she waved away her husband’s equine interests. “Besides, all that hay and dust makes Manfred sneeze so frightfully, I feared for the dear boy’s health.”

“Manfred?” Jasper thought sure Lord Sheppleton’s given name was George.

“My nephew, of course. There he is.” The viscountess waggled her fingers to a young man on the far side of the assembly room who was helping himself to more than his share of finger sandwiches. Jasper would class him as ‘husky’ now, but if he kept up those trencherman’s ways, the fellow was well on his way to ‘portly.’

Lady Sheppleton giggled indulgently. “Growing boy, you know.”

Growing sideways
, Jasper thought uncharitably. Pity they’d sold off their stable. A daily ride would have done the young man a world of good. “Your ward?”

“Yes, but only until he comes into his own,” she said. “He’ll be Lord Brumford one day, you know.”

“Must be coming soon. How old is he?”

“Twenty-seven,” she admitted. “Would you believe it? His father’s will stipulated that the barony be held in trust until Manfred marries.”

“Unusual clause.”

“My brother pulled a number of royal strings to manage it.” She sighed. “Not to speak ill of the dead, but really, how is a young man to get on in the world with only a miserly stipend? And it’s so difficult to find a young lady worthy of him. Believe me, I try.”

Jasper eyed Manfred. Lady Sheppleton’s nephew glanced about to see if anyone was looking at him and then stuffed a slice of lemon cake into his pocket.

“Indeed, finding your nephew’s equal must be challenge.”

“Yes, and one not made easier when Polite Society plays fast and loose with the rules.”

Jasper caught himself before he agreed that Manfred obviously needed all the help he could get. “Yes, there seems to be a certain easing of the restrictions this evening.”

Truth be told, his relatives were benefitting from the lowered standards, too. Homer Makepeace was so thoroughly steeped in trade, even if he’d been titled, he’d not have been admitted on his own worth. It still irked Jasper that Crispin Hawke used his influence with the patronesses to squeak his American cousins in.

Lady Sheppleton was squinting in the artist’s direction.

“I gather you are not a fan of the illustrious Crispin Hawke,” Jasper observed.

“Over-rated hack, if you ask me.” She shot a glare at the artist that should have knocked him off his feet. “You should see the absolute caricature he made of the bust of Manfred we commissioned.”

“What a pity.”

Jasper decided privately that Lady Sheppleton was brave to order a Hawke original of her nephew. He didn’t think much of the artist as a man, but no one could argue his likenesses weren’t brutally honest.

“I wanted to destroy the abomination, but my husband insisted on keeping it. Uses it as a wig stand in his chamber.”

Where doubtless his wife never visits, if the viscount is a man of any luck at all.

“Nevertheless, Crispin Hawke enjoys the patronage of the
ton
. Polite Society falls all over itself to lick the man’s boots,” Jasper said. “It doesn’t seem as if there’s much to be done about it.”

“But perhaps there is,” she said enigmatically.

He turned toward her sharply. “Madame, you have piqued my curiosity.”

“What do we know about Crispin Hawke, I mean
really
know about him? Yes, he’s hailed as a genius and all that rot, but what of his background?” Lady Sheppleton’s fan wove back and forth with the hypnotic rhythm of a smoke-dazed cobra. “Where did he come from?”

Jasper frowned, thinking hard. “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard.”

“Nor have I, not beyond the blandishments about his early recognition and training with some supposed master artist on the continent.” The viscountess slid her gaze back toward the dancers. “That cousin of yours, Grace Makepeace. She’s amazingly light on her feet, for such a very tall girl.”

Jasper nodded. It didn’t matter that Grace topped him by an inch or two. When he looked at her, all he saw were her father’s exceeding deep pockets.

“Very kind of you to smooth her way into Almack’s,” she said with a sly tone. “Very charitable of you to allow her and her family to ride your coattails into society, Lord Washburn.”

“Family must stick together.”

“Quite. Especially if the relationship isn’t close enough to be an impediment to such sticking,” Lady Sheppleton said dryly. “She’s said to be no end of a catch, so far as a dowry is concerned.”

Jasper inclined his head in her direction and wished someone would provide him with a way to escape this conversation. The dance had ended and Hawke was escorting Grace back to her parents.

“You’re very perceptive, Lady Sheppleton.”

The artist leaned down to say something into his cousin’s ear and her laughter tinkled across the room. Jasper’s neck heated with irritation.

“And unless my eyes deceive me, Crispin Hawke is occupying far too much of your American cousin’s time, isn’t he?” 

Jasper shrugged, unwilling to let her sharp eyes perceive more.

“What if someone were to discover something awful about Crispin Hawke? Something that so thoroughly discredited him in the minds of the
ton
no one would even dare breathe his name?” she asked in the same tone the Serpent must have used with Eve.

The idea was more than Jasper could resist. “That, madam, would be a very happy turn of events.”

Lady Sheppleton sighed. “Alas, such investigations are expensive and time consuming.”

Time, he might have. Wherewithal to deal with expense, he did not.

“Suppose I undertook to fund such an effort,” she offered.

Jasper almost could have kissed the old bat. “That is an enterprise I would heartily approve.”

“I’m so gratified to hear it, Lord Washburn.” Her eyes turned toward his sister, who was chatting with Cousin Minerva in the corner. Jasper followed the line of her gaze with a sinking sensation in his gut. “I hadn’t remembered your sister being so amiable when I met her last year. She really is quite fetching. Your sister Mary isn’t spoken for, is she?”

Jasper’s mind leapt to follow her
quid pro quo
in an instant. He sighed.

“When one dances with the devil, one must expect to be stuck with the piper’s bill,” he muttered. At least the pound of flesh required to satisfy this unholy debt wouldn’t come from him.

“I beg your pardon. I don’t believe I heard you properly over the music,” the viscountess said. “Could you repeat that?”

“I was just thinking that I believe my sister Mary would be charmed to meet your nephew Manfred,” Jasper said, a trifle over-loudly. “With your permission, I’ll go collect her and introduce them.”

Lady Sheppleton’s face contorted into a smile that would curdle cream. “Why, Lord Washburn, how very
perceptive
of you.”

* * *

The dance ended and Crispin escorted Grace back toward her waiting family. She leaned toward him to whisper, “I don’t know why I agreed to that.”

“Why, because you wanted to see if I could dance after all,” he said in a louder tone, then dropped his voice and tugged her closer. “The music is ended for the evening and there’s nothing to cover our speech now. I made a suggestion. You accepted and I expect to honor it.”

“But the risk—”

“—will be worth the reward,” he promised.

The last thing he wanted her to do was think better of leaving her window open for him. Of course, he wasn’t sure yet how he’d make it to an upper window, but between him and Wyckeham they’d think of something. They always had.

“Oh, look,” Grace said. “Isn’t that Lord Dorset talking to my father?”

She clutched his arm tighter and he laid a hand over hers. How right it felt. Then in the next instance, he was mentally kicking himself over how maudlin he was becoming.

What was wrong with him?
At this rate, I’ll launch into a bloody sonnet before the evening’s out,
he thought with disgust.

He focused on their destination and tried not to need his walking stick, though his thigh screamed in protest. In addition to Lord Washburn and his sister, Lord Dorset had condescended to join the Makepeace party. Along with Lady Sheppleton and her pudgy nephew. The marquess stood stiffly next to the wall, but he nodded when Grace’s father said something. Crispin bit back a curse.