Taming Beauty (11 page)

Jasper made his way to the sideboard and the full decanter of whiskey sitting upon the scarred wood. He lifted the bottle and poured the liquor down his throat, welcoming the burn, hoping it would be accompanied by oblivion.

Four hours later, the sun was setting over the cliffs but oblivion had not yet put in an appearance.

Instead Jasper was merely muddle-headed and angry. A combination even he, in his decidedly inebriated state, recognized as dangerous.

“The Beast of Breckenridge appears to be a dangerous man,” Harry whispered, shivering dramatically. “You really ought to let the wedding go forth as planned. It would serve that man right knowing his daughter must lay down for such a brute as payment for his sins.”

It occurred to Lilith she ought to have shared her change of heart in regards to thwarting Malleville’s plans. Only there’d been no time, what with overseeing the juggling of bedchambers required to see Alabaster, Harry and Kate comfortably settled, attending a twilight musicale with Meg and the other children, and dressing for dinner.

“Yes, well, about the wedding,” Lilith began, only to lose her train of thought entirely when she looked across the room to find Jasper watching her from the position he’d taken up by the cold hearth. He did look quite dangerous, and had since he’d entered the parlor after missing dinner entirely.

“I know you wrote the wedding must be stopped, but are you quite certain there is no way to allow it to go forth and still ruin that man financially?” Harry asked.

“That man has a name.”

“Not to me, he doesn’t.”

“And Dunaway will only be ruined if Sissy cries off, which she will not do. So you can give up on whatever plan you are hatching in that pretty head of yours.”

“What makes you think I am hatching a plan?”

“When are you not hatching plans and devising schemes?” Alabaster asked, waving Harry over and seating herself between the two younger ladies. “Most of them designed to ruin Dunaway in one way or another.”

“One day I’ll do more than devise a scheme,” Harry replied. “I’ll lay waste to everything that man holds dear.”

“Seeing as Dunaway holds very little dear, you might be waiting a long time,” Lilith said, watching Jasper step away from the hearth.

He prowled around the perimeter of the room, avoiding the nearly two dozen guests crowding the parlor, a goodly number of them young men who’d been only too happy to be entertained by Alabaster’s relatively tame tales during dinner.

“What else do I have to occupy my time?” Harry asked.

“You ought to be occupying your time learning all you can from Miss Beaumont so you might marry well,” Alabaster suggested.

“Marry well?” Harry repeated, her voice dripping scorn.

“I see no reason whatsoever why you shouldn’t, Harry dear. After all, you are a duke’s granddaughter, if you would but acknowledge the connection.”

Lilith paid little mind to the conversation, her attention focused almost entirely upon Jasper. The fluid grace of his movements. The way the light from the chandelier picked out fiery threads in his too-long tresses. The heated looks he shot her from various points in the room. The frown pulling at his mouth, thrusting the plump lower lip out in the masculine pout that drove her to distraction.

She’d kissed that mouth and wanted nothing more than to do it again. To lick that lower lip, pull it into her mouth and bite down just hard enough to draw a deep, dark growl from his broad chest.

Dangerous.

“A duke’s granddaughter who was born and raised in a dirty little hovel on a tenant farm in Shropshire.” Harry’s brittle voice penetrated Lilith’s thoughts only marginally as Jasper paced before the wall of French doors open to the cool night breeze.

“As much as it pains me to defend Dunaway, you can hardly lay the blame for that at his feet,” Alabaster replied.

“I do blame that man,” Harry hissed. “And I shall always blame him.”

“It was your mother, God rest her soul, who chose to marry Mr. O’Connell rather than face the consequences of her actions,” Alabaster replied. “Bathsheba and Monty found you and brought you back to civilization before any lasting damage was done. So for all intents and purposes you were raised in a duke’s household.”

“A duke’s mistress’s household,” Harry argued.

“Monty spent far more time in my sister’s London town house than he did in that great mausoleum in Scotland with his shrew of a duchess.”

“And so shall I, spend my time in London, that is. I’ve no intention of marrying and giving over my freedom to a man only to have him drag me off to the country. I would rather die a thousand deaths than spend even one day in the country.”

“And yet, here you are in the country.” Alabaster took hold of Lilith’s hand, drawing her attention away from the dangerous man pacing like a beast too long caged. Her grandmother clasped Harry’s fingers in her free hand and gave both ladies a little squeeze. “Offering assistance to your sister, just as you ought.”

“Sissy is no more Harry’s sister than she is mine,” Lilith argued purely out of habit.

“It is true,” Harry agreed. “I should rather not claim as my sister a grown woman who would not only allow her entire future to be shaped by her father’s inability to keep his trousers buttoned, but would then sit in a corner and pout about it.”

“While I will admit Sissy is a silly chit prone to excess emotion, she hasn’t any choice in the matter of who she marries,” Lilith protested.

“Don’t be naïve, darling,” Alabaster replied. “We all have choices. It is simply a matter of whether one is fearless enough to risk regret in order to make them.”

Just then Jasper moved across the parlor with purpose, aiming for the knot of young bucks clustered around the frayed settee and the two pretty young girls perched upon it.

Sissy and Kate both looked up at his approach, golden curls bobbing over the heads of the gentlemen sprawled on stools and chairs, and in one instance right on the floor at their feet.

Odd, but Sissy did not appear to be pouting. Rather, the girl looked radiant, all rosy, dimpled cheeks and flashing blue eyes.

Baron Malleville leaned over the back of the settee to whisper in Sissy’s ear and whatever words he spoke had her smiling and nodding her head.

Lilith jumped to her feet, her heart racing and an odd ringing filling in her ears. A sharp pain jabbed her somewhere in the vicinity of her heart and heat raced along her limbs.

Damn and blast, she was jealous of Dunaway’s spoiled, petulant daughter.

In six days Jasper would marry Sissy. In six days he would be free to whisper sweet nothings in the girl’s ear from sunup to sundown. To touch her and kiss her and make love to her all the hours between.

Too late, Lilith recognized the regret washing over her, and along with it a hollow loneliness unlike any she’d experienced in all the years she’d lived in isolation.

First in Gwendolyn’s house of debauchery, where she was mostly ignored by her temperamental mother and the over-worked and underappreciated servants.

Later at Miss Beaumont’s Academy, where for all she’d been thought glamourous and popular, she’d formed only the most superficial of friendships, easily discarded when her future diverged from that of the other girls.

And finally, within the circle of similarly situated ladies and gentlemen who made up her set of acquaintances in Town. Together they orbited the periphery of good society, bound together by the circumstances of their birth, by misfortune or folly, rather than any sort of familial or intimate connection.

She ought to have seduced Jasper out on the moors, enticed him, entrapped him, strung him along and, for an encore, married the great hulking beast.

“I believe I’ll retire,” Lilith murmured, unsettled by her own foolish, selfish notions.

“Go on then, darling,” Alabaster encouraged, giving Lilith’s hand a final squeeze before releasing her fingers. “You leave all the planning and scheming to Harry and me. It is what we do best, after all.”

Lilith considered retaking her seat long enough to explain to her grandmother and Harry that there was no longer any need for plans or schemes. Only she wasn’t altogether certain she could form the words necessary, what with her emotions in a queer tangle.

Morning would be soon enough for explanations, just before she ushered them all into Alabaster’s carriage for the journey back to London.

Lilith would not stay for the wedding, would not watch Sissy become Jasper’s wife.

It was all she could do not to march across the room and drag him away from the silly girl who would never appreciate the tender brush of his fingers over her hand, the gentle yet wicked kisses he bestowed upon her lips, the laughter that burst forth in snarling growls, or the care with which he tended his land and his family.

Pressing a kiss to her grandmother’s forehead and flashing a trembling smile at Harry, Lilith called out her goodnights to the room at large and made her way out to the terrace. The garden beyond was all shadows and gloom, a perfect accompaniment to her mood.

Lilith picked her way slowly and carefully through the hip high weeds and wildflowers, her mood growing darker with each step she took toward the small, barren room in the bachelor’s quarters.

Hidden away like some dirty little secret.

“Lilith.”

At the quiet whisper, she spun around.

Jasper stood at the edge of the terrace, a great hulking shadow in the night.

“Go back inside,” Lilith ordered, unaccountably angered by his sudden appearance and the temptation he had no right to wave in her face. “Your betrothed will be missing you.”

“We both know Lady Priscilla is happiest when I am farthest away,” Jasper replied warily as he stepped down into the garden.

“Plant a few kisses on her untutored lips and she’ll be singing a different tune,” Lilith replied, turning away to continue through the jungle that was his garden. “Silly girls are forever mistaking desire for true love.”

“What about you?” The foolish man followed her, his shadow falling over her shoulder.

“I was never a silly girl.”

“Did you never mistake desire for true love?”

“I mistook true love for desire.” Good Lord, it was funny in a morbid manner and so very typical of the muddle she was only just realizing she’d made of her life. “But then I have always been a contrary creature.”

Jasper let loose a low, rumbling snarl of laughter.

Lilith reached the spiraling staircase and twirled around to face the persistent, annoying man. “I have done all I can to avoid you. Why can you not do your part and stay as far away from me as possible?”

“Christ, woman,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “Do you think I have not tried?”

“What is it you want, Lord Malleville?”

“You.”

The single word unleashed a flurry of warring emotions in Lilith, hope and despair, desire and fear, fury and, oddly enough, amusement and affection. Damn the bloody man.

“You cannot afford me.” Lilith refused to regret the words even as Jasper flinched. Turning away from the pain she saw in his eyes, pain she’d intentionally inflicted, she started up the stairs, heart hammering and perspiration sprouting up on her temples and nape. “Go back to the house.”

Lilith climbed the circular staircase, her legs shaking and her heart racing as a terrible, heavy silence followed her ascent. She made a half-hearted attempt to convince herself she was pleased Jasper had heeded the order to return to the house, to his betrothed and the bosom of his family where he belonged.

Except she’d forgotten the man was stubborn and perhaps a bit mad.

A low roar of rage shattered the quiet, quickly followed by hurried footfalls as Jasper tracked Lilith’s ascent, his heavy tread shaking the staircase.

Reaching the landing, Lilith raced down the balcony to her borrowed bedchamber, Jasper close enough she heard his ragged breathing, felt the heat of his big body hot on her heels.

“You’re for bed early.” Tula looked up from the coverlet she was folding when Lilith pushed the door open with enough force to send it banging against the wall. The girl’s gaze skittered past her mistress and her eyes widened. “And in fine fiddle from the looks of things.”

“Out.”

Goodness, it was truly amazing what Baron Malleville could accomplish with a single word.

Tula tossed the coverlet on a chair, scooped up the candelabra on the table and scuttled around both her mistress and the enraged man looming over her shoulder in the open doorway. Lifting her skirts in her free hand, the maid ran for the staircase.

Lilith took two steps into the bedchamber and spun around to face the man who ought to know better than to allow himself to be led down the primrose path.

Jasper stood at the threshold, feet firmly planted, hands fisting at his sides. In the meager light of the moon, his face was all hard angles and jagged ridges, from his jaw clamped tight, to his heavy brow pulled low, to his lips, those lovely pouting lips, drawn into a rigid slash, and his eyes darkened almost to black.

Lilith knew she ought to be afraid. She’d awakened the beast, after all.

Yet she felt no fear, only a shivering sort of anticipation coupled with a queer sense of inevitability.

Still, she made one final attempt to save the poor man from his own foolish actions. “Please, my lord, return to the house before you are ruined.”

He stepped into the bedchamber and kicked the door shut behind him. “Too late.”

Lilith closed her eyes, a sigh of surrender trembling on her lips.