Taming Beauty (4 page)

“There are a handful of earls thrown into the mix here and there,” Lilith said, aiming a grin Dunaway’s way.

“I am honored to be a member of so lofty a mix,” Dunaway said with a solemnity he rarely displayed. 

Malleville looked up at Lilith for a moment before turning his gaze on Dunaway.

“Oh, did you not know Lilith is my daughter?” Dunaway asked, all innocence.

Well, well, well, this was interesting indeed. Who had the baron assumed her to be if not the daughter Dunaway had offered up at two percent per annum over ten years?

“I’ve never made a secret of it. Why should I? I’m quite proud of all my daughters,” the earl continued with a wave of one hand. “Surely most, if not all of your guests, knew of our familial connection before we arrived.”

“It is common knowledge in Town, my lord,” Sissy affirmed, daring to look at him full on.

“Common knowledge,” Malleville repeated with what might have been a chuckle or a raspy growl.

Then, uncouth or not, he rose to stand. “Please continue with your dinner. I’ve a few things to see to in my study. I will rejoin you when the gentlemen join the ladies in the parlor.”

Baron Malleville bowed to his guests, most of whom, if not all, had likely made him feel quite foolish in his own home.

“Common knowledge in Town,” Baron Malleville muttered as he paced the perimeter of his study, past the floor to ceiling shelves that had once held a valuable collection of rare books, past the wall of open French doors with their cracked and hazy panes of glass, past the massive stone hearth crumbling and falling away to litter the warped wood floor with dust.

Jasper would have preferred to walk along the cliffs, but it was one thing to abandon his guests halfway through dinner and another entirely for them to see him trudging along the rocky embankment in the dark like the madman he was reputed to be.

Stopping before the cold hearth, he looked up at the portrait of his father and felt the heavy burden of the eighth baron’s disappointment and censure.

Jasper ought to have become accustomed to the suffocating weight, seeing as he’d carried it on his shoulders for more than a decade.

It was a curse, that weight, an albatross about his neck he was destined to carry around with him until he’d set to rights all that he’d torn asunder.

In a single London Season, culminating in a night of dissipation and debauchery, quickly followed by a callow youth’s cocky posturing, he’d destroyed nearly all his forbears had built.

He lifted his hand to trace the scar on his cheek with his fingertips, welcoming the reminder of all he’d betrayed and all he’d pledged to make right once more.

Christ, he’d had a bloody plan, one he’d stuck to for years. Toiling from sunup to sundown to set the estate on the road to firm financial ground again. Scrimping and saving to provide Susan a small dowry, to send Amelia to finishing school and Matthew to university. Living the life of a monk so as not to add so much as a whisper of scandal to his tarnished reputation.

Jasper had needed only a suitable bride, a young lady of impeccable family lineage and pristine reputation, to lift the curse and restore his family to their rightful place in society.

Rose Parkhurst, pretty and sweet and biddable, was to have been that bride, the crowning glory in the garden he’d planted with such care and determination.

Until Dunaway plucked Rose from his grasp mere months before the wedding.

He might have simply found another young lady to marry, one with a practical nature whose head wouldn’t be turned by a pretty face and charming smile.

But no, Jasper Edward Grimley, ninth Baron Malleville had allowed his pride and misbegotten sense of honor to lead him down the path of retribution, nearly bankrupting his estate once more to buy up the earl’s debts and force him to offer up Lady Priscilla in Rose’s place.

Now he was bloody well bound to marry a lady who not only made her dissatisfaction with the match blatantly obvious but brought with her an illegitimate sister with a shockingly scandalous past of her own.

But it wasn’t the ironic twist of fate wrought by his ill-conceived intentions that had Jasper feeling like a madman.

No, what had him wanting to howl at the moon was the inescapable and irrefutable fact that Miss Lilith Aberdeen’s mere presence at his dining table set his heart racing, his blood boiling and his loins throbbing.

He couldn’t even look at the lady without wanting to pull all those tiny jet pins from her hair to watch it tumble around her shoulders in an untamed mane of curls. Just seconds before he tumbled her to the floor and pinned her sylphlike form beneath him, rutting over her like animal.

Turning away from the scorn in his father’s pale blue eyes, Jasper prowled to the row of French doors, his gaze raking over the stone terrace as he passed, moving beyond to the dark gardens when he turned around and paced back, before lifting to the bachelors’ quarters on his third pass.

Miss Aberdeen stood on the second story balcony, her gown glowing bronze in the candlelight streaming through the open door at her back. She was too far away to see her features, but it mattered not at all. Her beauty was burned into his memory along with the husky timber of her laughter and the exotic, spicy scent trailing after her like a cloud of opium smoke.

Before he knew what he was about, Jasper stepped through one of the open doors and crossed half the distance of the terrace, coming to a stop only when he heard the muted sounds of the ladies gathered in the parlor next door.

What had he been thinking to have her put just across the way from the sanctuary of his study?

He’d been thinking to make Dunaway work to get at his latest paramour.

Only Miss Aberdeen wasn’t the earl’s ladybird, and she was quartered far too close for Jasper’s lax grip upon his ever-dwindling sanity.

He meant to turn back the way he’d come, and he might have managed to do just that had the woman not been watching him like a lioness waiting for her prey to step near enough to pounce upon without expending undue effort.

Never one to back away from a challenge, no matter some challenges resulted in nothing but mayhem, Jasper continued across the terrace and on into the jungle that was his long-neglected garden.

“Good evening, my lord,” the lioness purred, resting her forearms on the iron balustrade and leaning over to expose the long line of her throat and the swell of her bosom. A thin stream of smoke rose from a black cheroot held between two long, pale fingers. “I’ve snuck off for a smoke, seeing as I thought it prudent not to further shock your guests by remaining with the gentleman in the dining room.”

“I suspect you’ve never been accused of an excess of prudence,” Jasper replied even as he headed toward the spiral staircase at one corner of the old, white-washed structure he’d inhabited for the first year of his self-imposed exile.

Laughter, low and sultry, drifted down from the balcony.

He took the stairs at a leisurely pace, never mind the thundering of his heart and the lecherous thoughts racing through his mind. He could not act upon them, could not sweep the woman up in his arms and carry her through the open door into the same bedchamber he’d retreated to in humiliation all those years ago.

He would not go back to that selfish existence, wallowing in his own degradation only to drown in the shame which was certain to follow. He’d learned his lesson—a hard, painful lesson he wouldn’t wish on anyone.

“I do possess my own brand of prudence,” Miss Aberdeen said, watching his approach from the corner of her eye. “Learned by trial and error, as any good lesson ought to be learned.”

Her words so mirrored his thoughts, he nearly stumbled over his own two big, clumsy feet. “Was it prudence that had you airing your family’s dirty linen at my dinner table?”

“It was actually.” She took a slow pull on the cheroot and blew out three perfect little rings, quickly dispersed by the breeze. “And that linen was pristine compared to the stained unmentionables I might have waved about for your family and neighbors to ogle.”

“You might as well share the rest of it with me,” he muttered, stopping an arm span away from her and leaning against the bannister, a wholly contrived negligent pose considering the tumult of lust coursing through him.

“Whatever shall we talk about at dinner over the next twelve days if I don’t dole out the scandal a bit at a time?” she asked, looking out over the gardens, such as they were. “The wedding will take place in twelve days, will it not?”

“It will,” he confirmed.

“Would you care for one?” She lifted her hand to indicate the cheroot. “They are my own particular blend, rolled with my own nimble fingers.”

“No.”

“A nasty habit I only indulge once daily, after dinner. Prudence, and all that.”

“I smoke a pipe on occasion.” Jasper could not have said why he offered up the information.

“One of Gwendolyn’s lovers smoked a pipe,” she said with a smile. “Sir Malcolm used to allow me to pack it and light it for him. Cherry flavored tobacco, it was.”

“How old were you?” What kind of life had she led that she spoke of her mother’s various protectors with fond remembrance.

“Nine, perhaps ten. I suppose it matters not a whit whether Sissy is happy with the match?”

It took Jasper a moment to find his place in the conversation once more. “Not a whit.”

“I might have miscalculated,” she murmured, as if speaking to herself. “I hadn’t any idea you weren’t an exceedingly wealthy man.”

Jasper didn’t need to ask how she’d deduced the sorry state of his finances. It was evident in the garden she couldn’t or wouldn’t look away from, in the worn carpets in every room and the skeletal staff scurrying about in a doomed attempt to see to the comfort of all his guests. “I beggared myself to raise the capital to buy Dunaway’s debts.”

“I’d say you more than beggared yourself,” she countered. “If I am not much mistaken, you’ve well and truly buggered yourself.”

Jasper barked out a laugh, rusty and gravelly from disuse.

“Tell me, my lord, why did you do this foolish thing?”

“I need a bride, seeing as your father stole mine away three months before the wedding.”

“Dunaway only borrowed Rose,” she replied. “To my knowledge he didn’t get a daughter on her so you could have married her still. Or if you insist upon marrying an innocent, surely there are any number of comely country girls who would gladly take you on.”

“A highborn wife with an untarnished reputation.” Jasper’s voice came out harsher than he’d intended, but her refusal to turn away from the garden had his temper sparking.

“It seems you do hear the tittle tattle from Town even way out here. I was beginning to wonder.”

“Because I wasn’t aware Dunaway had fathered an illegitimate daughter, you mean?”

Miss Aberdeen straightened from her elegant slouch against the bannister and rounded on him, her catlike green eyes widening. “You weren’t aware Dun had fathered… But surely…” Whatever words she’d been poised to utter fell away when she frowned, her face going pale but for twin spots of color cresting her cheeks.

“Miss Aberdeen.” Jasper reached for her, his fingertips brushing her upper arm before he realized what he was doing. He jerked his hand back, only belatedly feeling the heat of her flesh from the brief contact.

“That lying, conniving bastard,” she said with a laugh that sounded raw. “Just when I think… But never mind. And please, you might as well call me Lilith.”

“We are soon to be family,” he replied, a much needed reminder that this woman, with her flyaway curls and almost unbearably beautiful face, was forever out of his reach.

“Family? We’ll be nothing of the sort.”

“I hate to contradict a lady—”

“I’m no lady.” Her gaze fell to his hand and he realized he was flexing and shaking his fingers as if he’d touch live flames and the tips had come away singed. “As we both know.”

“All the same, you are my future wife’s sister.”

“Oh for goodness sake,” she exclaimed, flicking the cheroot over the bannister. “Why is it everyone keeps tossing that bloody word about?”

“Wife?”

“Sister,” she huffed. “You will never see so much as a shilling of the interest on Dunaway’s debt, let alone recoup any portion of the principal. You do realize that, don’t you?”

“I hold the mortgages to two of the earl’s un-entailed properties, including the estate on which Lady Dunaway was born and raised. Should his lordship default on his loan, I will simply take possession of the properties and sell them.”

“Goodness, that will make for a felicitous marriage,” she replied with a wry grin. “Both yours and Dunaway’s.”

“Perhaps he ought to have considered the consequences to his actions before he seduced my betrothed.”

“As you considered the consequences before you seduced Lord Morrissey’s mistress?” Lilith shot back, her aim straight and true. “I’ve never quite understood the sequence of events. Did you lay with Mrs. Denton before or after you wagered and lost your fortune to the viscount?”

Jasper raised two fingers to his brow in salute of her marksmanship.

“And how did the duel come about?” she persisted, her gaze tracing the line of raised flesh running along his cheek. “Did you name Morrissey a cheat and challenge him to meet you at dawn?”

“He took exception to his paramour bedding a bankrupt Cornishman.”

“Well, of course he did. Morrissey only turns a blind eye for wealthy earls and dukes who might contribute some bauble or trinket to his coffers. You ought to have chosen pistols as it is common knowledge his lordship is deadly with a sword.”

“I hadn’t the choice of weapons,” Jasper admitted, enjoying himself immensely and wanting only to continue to have all of her considerable wit and wry humor aimed squarely at him for as long as possible. “Seeing as I called him out for the slur against my countrymen.”

“Were you still in Mrs. Denton’s bedchamber when you challenged him?”

“Actually, the lady lay next to me on a narrow bed under the eaves of a run-down rooming house in Cheapside.”

“With the vermin-ridden bedcovers pulled up to her chin no doubt. Morrissey must have been livid. Surely you could have taunted and needled him into issuing the challenge so that you were given the choice of weapons. It isn’t terribly difficult to manipulate a man’s convoluted notions of pride and honor, after all.”