Tender the Storm (16 page)

Rolfe's eyes narrowed to silver slits, and an ironic smile played about his lips. "How odd," he drawled, "that the estate of matrimony should be so little to your liking. By anyone's lights, Ashton is a most . . . complacent husband."

She pouted prettily, and peeped up at him through the sweep of her lashes. Half laughing, half sulky, she responded.
"And so old and utterly boring.
But you needn't worry, Rolfe. I know that matrimony holds no allure for you."

There was just enough inflection in her voice to turn the statement into a question. Rolfe saw a way out of his dilemma, and he grasped it.

"You misjudge me, my dear. My own nuptials are not so very far distant."

There was a shocked silence. "Your n —nuptials?" she stammered.
" 'Tis
the first I've heard of it, Rolfe." With his cruel words, she saw not only her hope of position and wealth fading, but also her claim on what had proved to be, throughout their short liaison, a very liberal purse.

He made a show of removing his gold filigree snuffbox from his coat pocket. With finger and thumb, he dipped into it. "Naturally, you are the first to be taken into my confidence."

"But who . . . ?" Her eyes flashed,
then
cooled to ice-cold emeralds. "The little French girl, I presume?" she said, her voice etched with venom.

"The little . . . ?" Humor warmed Rolfe's eyes. His gaze shifted and came to rest on Zoë. "She is a mere child," he demurred, and unthinkingly tightened his lips as a young fop whose reputation was notorious even by
ton
standards bent over Zoë's extended hand. He shut his snuffbox with a snap. "She needs a keeper, that one," he said indistinctly.

For the first time, it was borne in on the lady that she had suffered an insult in the Devonshire's gallery when Rolfe had whisked her away before she could be introduced to his betrothed. At the time, she had been flattered by what she had supposed was his
loverlike
eagerness to have her to himself.

That eagerness she now saw in a new light, and the heedless, bitter words slipped out before she could guard her tongue. "The
most noble
marquess of Rivard shackled to that little drab? You're hoaxing me, Rolfe! The girl is no beauty! She has no address! In short, she has nothing to recommend her!"

Cool gray eyes lifted to meet hers. "Innocence is its own recommendation," he said, a curious inflection that was not quite anger in his voice.

She caught a glimpse of steel in one who habitually gave the appearance of being as soft as satin. Forcing a small smile, she said, rather helplessly, "Forgive me. It's just that I had no notion that you were thinking of getting married. Naturally, you took me by surprise." A teasing lilt crept into her voice. "May I be permitted to say that you don't have the look of a man who is madly in love, Rolfe?"

"Love?
What has that to say to anything? I'm talking about duty."

For a fleeting moment triumph flashed in her eyes. Laughingly she offered, "Then may I be the first to wish you happy?"

"That would be premature. Nothing is settled."

"Oh?" When he did not respond to her hopeful look she went on, "In any event, it makes no difference to our arrangement. We ladies know when to turn a blind eye to a husband's little . . . intrigues."

He assumed a mock melancholy air. "My dear Roberta," he observed, "
as
the law stands, a wife would be a fool to do anything less. A single lady, on the other hand, is not constrained to fall in with her betrothed's wishes, nor tolerate his follies, for
that matter."

"I don't think I follow you."

"Don't you?"
One eyebrow quirked.
"You never used to want for sense. What I mean is this —until I get my ring on the girl's finger, it behooves me to conduct myself with all the circumspection of a novitiate in holy orders. And my advice to you is to emulate my example."

"What?"

"Divorce is a distasteful business."

The smile on her lips slipped as the full significance of his blandly offered words registered. "Are you suggesting that we should stop seeing each other?"

He shrugged, the gesture adroitly avoiding the necessity of a verbal reply. In the next moment, he returned the salute of some gentleman who had just entered, and making the lady a courtly bow, he sauntered off.

Beneath his charming and gracious exterior, Rolfe was seething. Roberta Ashton, he reflected, was a designing woman, and he was just beginning to see where those designs led. The night before, she had babbled about reconciling with her husband. This evening, the talk was all of divorce. Damn if she was not angling to land him in her net! He could scarcely credit it. The lady was no innocent. She must know that the scion of a great and noble house might not marry where the lady's virtue was in question, not even if he had a mind to, which Rolfe certainly did not.

Divorce.
The very word repelled him, but not half as much as the thought of marriage to Roberta
Ashton. It was well known that the lady changed lovers as often as she changed her gloves. He was only one in a long string of swains. Neither of them had demanded fidelity of the other.

She was fishing. That thought steadied him. Nevertheless, in the unlikely event that George Ashton was serious in his intent to procure a divorce, Rolfe was resolved that it was not he who would be cited in the divorce action.

His eyes scanned the crush and fell on Zoë. The little French girl, he decided, would do very well as a diversionary tactic. His lips quivered in amusement as he reflected that it was Roberta herself who had put the notion into his head.

As he approached the knot of young
fribbles
who
surrounded Zoë, her eyes lifted to meet his. She gave a start, then blushed furiously, and lowered her lashes. She really was a charming child, he thought, and adroitly cut her out of the herd.

Having spent a good half-hour promenading through the spacious public rooms under the avidly interested gaze of the
ton,
and the affronted stare of his erstwhile mistress (who had lost no time in acquiring a new beau), Rolfe returned Zoë to her gaping companions. Introductions were made, and some commonplaces were exchanged. Soon after, Rolfe quit Devonshire House.

But he was restless. The thought of the cold, empty house in St. James held no attraction. He put in an appearance at Covent Garden and after the performance slipped into the Green Room where well-breached
lordlings
and performers hovered about sipping champagne from long-stemmed
glasses. The girl who had attracted his notice the week before, and who had been the source of his mistress's jealous temper tantrum, was present, and to all appearances, unattached. Rolfe lost no time in attaching the pretty little thing to
himself
.

The following morning, he penned a note, couched in the friendliest terms, to his former mistress. The message, however, was unmistakable. Their arrangement was at an end. To sweeten the parting, he gave into his footman's hand a velvet box containing an expensive, diamond trinket. When his lackey returned from Mrs. Ashton's house with the intelligence that both box and letter had been accepted, Rolfe congratulated himself on extricating himself from the woman's clutches quite painlessly.

Further reflection tempered his exuberance. There was still the problem of the lady's husband. George Ashton must be brought to realize that his errant wife held no interest for the marquess of Rivard. Hard on that thought
came
a picture of the little French girl, Zoë.

Within half an hour, Rolfe's team was hitched to his curricle, and he was on his way to Gloucester Road.

As the old year slipped into the new, the residents of Gloucester Road were highly diverted by the spectacle of Lord Rivard's handsome curricle and four coming and going at all hours of the afternoon. And that the passenger in this enviable rig was invariably the same pretty young female, and she a member of the French community, occasioned more than a little tongue wagging.

The housekeeper at number 53 summed up the speculation when she observed darkly to the august butler of that residence, "That pretty little thing? For all that she's French, she looks respectable.
Summat
should tell her that yon
lordling
is like to offer her no more than a slip on the shoulder."

Mr. Teviot, the butler, glanced out the window and caught a glimpse of Zoë in a green velvet pelisse with a large-brimmed bonnet tied under the chin with matching ribbons. "She's one of Madame
Bertaut's
houseguests," he intoned with the air of one who has superior knowledge.

"So?"

"Madame Bertaut knows her duty." To the housekeeper's questioning look he answered in the same infuriating drone, "Unless I'm much mistaken, yon
lordling's
character must be beyond reproach,
else
Madame Bertaut would have sent him packing."

The butler at number 53 was wiser than he knew. Madame Bertaut permitted the marquess of Rivard's innocuous attentions to her charge for only one reason. She had discerned in his lordship's expression, in unguarded moments, a certain something,
a tenderness
towards Zoë which augured well for her future. The hope that the marquess would offer for the girl, she confided to no one, not wishing to betray a turn of mind which she knew would be ridiculed. Madame Bertaut was an incurable romantic.

On the other hand, Francoise was not a romantic. She viewed Lord Rivard's attentions to her friend with marked suspicion.

"Does he overstep the bounds of propriety?" she demanded as Zoë returned from one of her drives with the marquess.

"No," said Zoë, swallowing her disappointment.

"Has he taken liberties, or made suggestive remarks?"

"He's a pattern card of rectitude," replied Zoë, studying to inject some enthusiasm into her voice.

Francoise was far from satisfied with these assurances. "What do you talk about?"

Zoë removed her wide-brimmed bonnet and toyed with the ribbons. It had taken her hours to unpick the green velvet gown and fashion the cloth into the pelisse she was wearing with its saucy bonnet. Her efforts to appear modish were wasted on the marquess. He never seemed to notice what she was wearing.

"We
talk of France, sometimes, and . . . and my family." Lord Rivard had been kindness itself. By dint of careful questioning, he had gradually encouraged Zoë to talk about the past, particularly her early life, when her family was together, and Paris was an enviable place to pass one's days. He thought her parents' case was hopeless. Not that he had said as much to her. But there was something which crept into his voice, a way he had of diverting her when her recollections became
melancholy, that
warned her to expect the worst. She longed to unburden herself about Claire and Leon, too, but could not bring herself to go against Claire's express wishes.