Taming Beauty (14 page)

“It’s a kimono and I rather doubt he got so far as the foyer.”

“Ten pounds says he didn’t make it past the gardens.”

“You haven’t ten pounds.” Even as Lilith spoke the words, an idea was taking shape in her mind, an utterly simple, wonderfully wicked and positively symmetrical plan to ensure all the principle players received precisely what they deserved, if not what they wanted. “But if you are feeling particularly lucky, Dun, I’ve a different wager to offer up.”

The ninth Baron Malleville made it only so far as the overgrown garden before two ginger-haired boys darted around the crumbling fountain, a sprite of a demon scrambling along in their wake.

When Charlie saw him winding his way through the overgrown flora, the boy came to so sudden a stop Henry plowed into his back, sending them both tumbling to the ground in a tangle of limbs.

With a cackle of laughter a witch would envy, Meg leaped atop the pile of squirming arms and legs, transforming what might have been a minor melee into an all-out wrestling match.

Jasper had time only to take one step forward with the intention of somehow separating the writhing bodies before Susan appeared on the terrace.

“Good Lord, Jasper, what are you wearing?” she demanded, hands landing on her hips.

“Your children are murdering one another and you are worried about my garments?” He tugged at said garment to be certain all necessary parts were decently covered.

Susan waved one hand in the air as if batting at a pesky fly. “They’ll come away with nothing worse than stained breeches and a tad less energy to argue when nap time rolls around. Are you wearing a lady’s dressing gown?”

“I borrowed it from Pritchett.” Ha, let her stew on that for a while. “If you’ll excuse me.”

Jasper reached the safety of his study only to run afoul of Amelia when he opened the door to the foyer.

“Oh good, there you are,” she began before her eyes dropped and her mouth fell open.

“Were you searching for me?” Jasper slipped past her and turned for the stairs.

“Lady Priscilla is asking after you.” Amelia, as stubborn a woman as he’d ever encountered, fell into step behind him. “Are those butterflies embroidered on your robe?”

“I’m in something of a hurry.”

Amelia tugged at his hem as he started up the stairs. “No, not butterflies but dragonflies. Well, that’s a blessing I suppose.”

He knew he shouldn’t ask. “How are dragonflies a blessing?”

“Dragonflies aren’t quite as effeminate as butterflies.”

Had he not turned around to glare at his sister, he might have reached his bedchamber without further humiliation.

Unfortunately, he did turn, and just in time to catch her grinning up at him from the landing.

“Red is a lovely color on you. You really ought to wear it more often.” Amelia’s words fell away as she erupted into giggles.

“I’m pleased I amuse you.” And he was, leastwise he would have been at any other time. “If there is nothing else, I shall leave you to it.”

Amelia was still laughing as she spun about and headed to the front parlor, no doubt searching for Susan so she could spread the tale. She’d be awfully disappointed when she learned her sister was already fully aware of his ludicrous attire.

Jasper reached the second story without further mishap. His bedchamber door was just there at the end of the hall. Unfortunately there were two doors on either side between him and safety.

He ought to have known one, if not all four would open. It had been that sort of morning and he’d only been awake some ten or twelve minutes. Ten or twelve minutes to go to hell in a handbasket.

When the door to his immediate right opened he sent up a silent prayer of gratitude. Matthew might snicker a bit to come upon his older brother in women’s garments but he would hardly throw stones, all things considered.

Except three unanticipated guests had necessitated the removal of Matthew and Pritchett to one of the uninhabitable bedchambers in the guest wing. And Alabaster Sinclair had claimed an aversion to morning sunlight as an excuse to displace Lady Priscilla, which meant it wasn’t Matthew who stepped out of the bedchamber and directly into Jasper’s path.

“Good gracious,” Lady Priscilla breathed, eyes widening until the blue orbs fairly bulged out from beneath her winged brows.

There was nothing for it but to brazen it out. Jasper bowed, careful to keep his borrowed robe closed lest he frighten her witless with a glimpse of his muscular, hairy thighs. “Good morning, Lady Priscilla.”

“I…yes…you…” she stuttered, heat blooming on the apples of her cheeks. “You are…that is…is that?”

“A kimono, yes,” he replied as if agreeing to her nonsensical ramblings, as if he had any firmer hold on his wits than she. “They’re all the rage. In the orient.”

“I…see?”

“I thought you might, what with your flare for fashion.”

She looked down at the ruffled pink monstrosity she wore and back up at him with a hint of suspicion in her eyes. No, it wasn’t suspicion at all, but keen intelligence flavored with a pinch of mockery, not unlike the look a man might receive from any one of her sisters. Or her father, for that matter.

“If you will excuse me?” Jasper did not wait for her agreement but simply turned on his bare heels.

“You wanted to see me?” Lady Priscilla said, following his less than graceful retreat.

“I did?”

“Last night you asked if we might speak privately this morning,” she explained, skipping to keep up with his long strides.

“Right, and so we shall.” Damn, he’d forgotten he’d meant to sit the lady down and ask, beg if he must, if she would consider jilting him.

Daft notion, that. She was Dunaway’s daughter, after all.

“Shall I await you in the parlor, my lord?” Lady Priscilla asked. “Or perhaps the dining room? If you haven’t already broken your fast I would be pleased to keep you company.”

Now she turned up sweet and biddable?

“The parlor will be fine, Lady Priscilla.”

“In thirty minutes, my lord? Or will you need longer to don appropriate attire?”

“Ah, so that’s the way of it,” Jasper murmured, relieved to learn she already knew he’d been discovered in Lilith’s bedchamber. It simplified and cemented his plans to trade one sister for the other. “On second thought, there’s no time like the present, Lady Priscilla.”

When Jasper walked into the parlor an hour later dressed in his Sunday best, never mind it was Saturday, he found the room empty.

A low hum of conversation carried through the open French doors, followed by a shriek of childish laughter.

Jasper followed the familiar sounds, knowing he would find the children tearing across the south lawn while his siblings lounged about on the worn wicker furnishings scattered across the terrace.

It had been much the same when Jasper was a boy playing with his brother and sisters on the lawn while his parents and various aunts and uncles, all gone now, congregated together amid much laughter, good natured arguing and fond remembrances of bygone days.

It was those memories, and hundreds more of equal, inestimable value, that had spurred him on when he’d wanted to give up, lightened the load when he’d felt it heavy enough to crush him and forced him to believe the curse of his own making would someday be lifted.

And so it would, leastwise the better part of it, seeing as he would be forced to forego the prize of Northridge. He wasn’t so foolish as to believe Dunaway would pay him the thirty thousand pounds for honor’s sake.

Still, he would have Breckenridge, the heart and soul of his family for more than a hundred years. The estate turned a pretty penny most years, wheat prices, wool demand and weather permitting. His family would be well-provided for, healthy and happy with their collective lots in life, as unorthodox as they may be.

Lilith was not the innocent bride he’d imagined, and her reputation was a bit frayed around the edges, what with her notoriously scandalous female relations. But her family tree was blooming with earls, viscounts and dukes. Even a king if one cared to trace the branches back a handful of generations. Surely those connections would open enough doors to mend his family name given a bit of time.

All that remained was to wrestle Dunaway into submission, settle the matter of a dowry with terms he could live with, and convince Lilith to willingly, if not joyfully, take her sister’s place at the alter in five days. 

Jasper Edward Grimley, ninth Baron Malleville, the Beast of Breckenridge ought to have known that when it came to Dunaway and his daughters, even the best laid plans had a way of falling to ruin.

All seemed in perfect order when he stopped at the threshold of the open French door and raised one hand to shade his eyes from the merciless late-morning sun.

Meg and her brothers were running across the lawn with butterfly nets raised high, their laughter floating on a blessedly cool breeze.

Annie gurgled and cooed from her basinet, only her pudgy legs visible beneath the blanket tossed over the top to protect her from the sun. 

Susan was in her customary spot at the small wrought iron table surrounded by mismatched wicker chairs, though Jasper couldn’t remember ever seeing her sitting on Rossiter’s lap.

Amelia sat beside her sister and brother-in-law, a big, floppy-brimmed bonnet shading her face lest a single freckle sprout up to mar her porcelain skin.

All seemed relatively normal until Amelia plucked a strawberry from a crystal bowl filled with a variety of brightly colored fruit floating and bobbing in clear liquid. Dipping the berry into a saucer of what could only be chocolate, she handed it Rossiter.

Normalcy took a flight of pure fancy when Susan sprawled across her husband’s thighs with her head tipped back to receive the strawberry he held before her parted lips.

“Try the pineapple next,” Alabaster Sinclair ordered with a wave of one slender, be-ringed hand. “It is a treat not to be missed.”

Lady Priscilla rose from a long wicker settee and wobbled to the table to fill a small plate with fruit. She hesitated over the chocolate before turning back to join Kate, plopping down beside her half-sister with a giggle. “The champagne’s the best part, don’t you think?”

“My mother, God rest her soul, swore by champagne for breakfast,” Alabaster said. “And she lived past ninety.”

“I thought it was oysters and ale.” Matthew looked up from where he sat on the flagstones. 

Jasper blinked, certain the sun was playing tricks with his vision. Surely Matthew was not sitting between Harry’s spread thighs, her skirts hiked up to her knees to accommodate his shoulders.

“Bite your tongue, child,” Alabaster exclaimed. “Ale is for peasants.”

“That explains why I like ale so well,” Harry tossed back without lifting her gaze from her fingers weaving a chain of daisies into Matthew’s curls.

Good God, Pritchett was adorned in the same manner and stretched out on his back with his head in Matthew’s lap, his fingers listlessly strumming a mandolin. His eyes were closed and a serene smile graced his thin lips. Lips that appeared to have been recently rouged, so red were they.

“You are no peasant, Hesperia O’Connell,” Alabaster retorted.

“Hesperia?” Susan chortled. “I thought your name was Harriet.”

“Oh, what I wouldn’t give were it so.”

“Wasn’t Hesperia a water nymph or some such thing?” Matthew asked, his words slightly slurred.

“Hesperia was one of the Hesperides, mythical nymphs of the evening,” Alabaster said. “Or daughters of the night, depending upon who’s telling the tale. Either way, the Hesperides were tasked with guarding Hera’s golden apples lest any man find immortality with a single bite of the forbidden fruit.”

“Why is it always apples that are forbidden?” Susan asked. “Why not strawberries?”

“Especially those dipped in chocolate,” Rossiter added with a grin for his wife.

“Simply sinful,” Susan agreed.

Jasper stepped out onto the terrace, feeling a bit disoriented by the accumulated events of the morning. Upon closer inspection, he found the table splattered with chocolate and littered with orange peels, grape stems, champagne bottles and crystal flutes in various stages of full or empty, depending upon one’s perspective.

A hand-rolled cheroot smoldered in a teacup, the smoke a thin stream quickly lost to the breeze, leaving behind an aroma which teased Jasper’s nostrils and his memory.

The entire scene had a dreamlike quality, faintly reminiscent of the last fete he’d attended in London before his self-imposed exile. Hosted by a legendary courtesan—though not one related to his future wife—the gathering had been a jubilee of sensual delights. It had also been the prelude to his downfall. In a smoky cardroom, a viscount with more luck than any man had a right to possess had plied him with whiskey and taken jabs at his country ways and careful wagering. Until, in a fit of wounded dignity and drunken confidence, Jasper had bet both the fortune inherited from his father and the estate that had been his mother’s dowry.

“There you are, Lord Malleville.” Lilith’s voice, soft and breathless, jolted him from the memory, leaving behind a vague sense of foreboding.

Turning his head, he found her lounging on a brocade chaise that had once been burgundy but had long since faded to pink, a wealth of pillows at her back and her long legs stretched across the cushions.

She might have been a mythical goddess, one of Hera’s nymphs dropped down from the heavens to tempt mere mortals into mischief. Her frock was extraordinary, some sort of flowing shift of palest blue silk with tiny cap sleeves, the fabric parting to reveal an underskirt of lace so fine he could clearly see her legs beneath the weave. The bodice was little more than a scrap of fabric cinched with a wide silver ribbon, her breasts all but spilling over the top.