The Blue Devil (The Regency Matchmaker Series) (17 page)

He supposed Miss Davidson’s parents simply hadn’t been able to come up with the blunt to send her to school until now. The thought crossed his mind that she may be the spy he was looking for, but he dismissed the idea as soon as it occurred to him. Miss Davidson was no spy. Of that he was certain. She had neither the guile nor the heart for such work. She displayed her feelings openly, and Nigel guessed that she’d suffocate under the weight of them if she tried to conceal them.

His inattentive attention wandered back to the remarkable idea of Kitty’s being old enough to have a child. He imagined her standing with a child clinging to her skirts. The image disturbed him somehow. Perhaps it was because she looked little more than a child herself, though the soft curves he’d discovered hidden under that awful rag she’d been wearing when he’d picked her up had certainly been enough of a clue to the contrary. The gown he’d sent and which she now wore was a vast improvement. The sprigged muslin clung to her body, and though her curves were not voluptuous, on her slight frame what curves she did possess suited her quite nicely indeed. She was really a comely little thing, and the blue-flowered dress perfectly set off her blue eyes and crown of shiny yellow curls. Madame Vensois was a miracle worker. When the chit returned home, she would be well attired, well educated, and able to catch herself a suitable husband. Perhaps a shopkeeper or a clerk. Maybe even a vicar or a farmer with a large holding.

And, Nigel realized, her wedding day wouldn’t be very long in coming, for, by Jove, Kitty was eighteen. Her parents would be unwise to wait much longer, and hadn’t they already proved their shrewdness by sending her off to school in the first place?

“You look lovely today.” His tone of voice, more growl than purr, surprised him. He chalked his sour temper up to the impending arrival of his birthday and resolved to moderate his tone of voice. “That shade of blue just suits you.” His eyes roved critically over the sprigged muslin gown he’d sent. Yes, she was quite attractive. She wouldn’t have any trouble finding a husband. She shifted under his perusal and blushed becomingly before seating herself behind her tea tray.

“Lady Jane is more elegantly attired this afternoon than I, but you did not compliment her, my lord.”

“My ward is already secure in my regard. Too secure. She believes she can behave however she pleases with impunity. Yet I assure you I gave her no offense. She is too concerned with how I feel about you to be concerned with my lack of manners toward herself.” He took one of the small biscuits from her plate. “She fancies you have formed some sort of instantaneous
tendre
, you see.”

Kathryn gave an unladylike snort. “A
tendre
for
you
?”

He nodded, smiling, for the very idea was amusing. Looking into Kitty Davidson’s eyes was like looking down into the mouth of a volcano.

“Yes. She says we are perfect for each other.”

“Sure,” she muttered, “and I am a hedgehog.”

“A hedgehog?” Blackshire shook his head. “Well . . . I will own you are small and adorable—”

Kitty sniffed loudly.

“—but you are much more prickly.”

She scowled at him, and Nigel suddenly wished he had not provoked her. He found that he very much wanted to see her smile at him instead of frowning.

“You must excuse Jane’s fancies. Like every other female her age, she is too much consumed with thoughts of marriage,” he said, “and her preoccupation has her imagining romantic feelings where none exist. Particularly where she herself is concerned, but in others as well. I suppose I should not be impatient with her. She is fifteen, after all.”

“You are not being fair, my lord. Not all fifteen-year-olds are consumed with thoughts of romance. Some of them are quite self-possessed and know their own minds and feelings very well. Take me, for instance.”

“You?”

“Yes,” she said, looking down at her skirt and plucking at some imaginary imperfection. “I myself am near fifteen, and you cannot claim that my thoughts are dominated by romantical nonsense, now can you?”

Nigel chuckled. “You are not an accomplished liar.”

“P—pardon me?” she stammered.

“Your cheeks are flaming, you are fidgeting, your breathing is a little too rapid, and your pulse is beating a visible staccato at your throat.” He crossed his arms across his chest and grinned. “Besides, Jane just told me you are eighteen.”

KATHRYN GULPED AIR. “Oh dear! I—I can explain. There is a perfectly good reason why I—”

Blackshire stuck out his palm. “Please. You do not owe me an explanation. Your reasons are your own. And your secret is safe with me. We shall speak no more of it.”

Kathryn was slack-jawed. Bewildered. Flummoxed.

“Did—did you just offer to keep a confidence, my lord?”

“I can keep secrets. Why? Does that surprise you?”

It did. Kindness of any sort was the last thing she expected from Blackshire—especially after the way “Kitty Davidson” had treated him. He walked to the large globe that stood on a cluttered table and spun it absently.

“Your defense of my ward pleases me,” he said.

“She is my friend,” Kathryn said simply. It was true. She’d only known Jane for a short time, but for whatever reason, the girl had decided to befriend her. She’d seen her up to her elbow in a silver vase, skulking off to the stables past midnight, and stealing food from the kitchen, and hadn’t said a word—unless she’d told Blackshire.

“Good,” he said. “Since you are such good friends, perhaps you will agree to accompany us on our drive in the park today. Jane is absurdly enamored of a most unsuitable young man. She imagines he is ready to whisk her off to Gretna Green, though they have never even been introduced. Perhaps you can make her see her own folly. Or, at the very least, distract her and keep her from making a fool of herself.”

“Very well, my lord. Perhaps I can.”

But Kathryn had no intention of trying to convince Jane that her regard for Quinn, Lord Bankham, was silly. No. Instead, she would contrive to bring about the introduction Jane so fervently desired—and which Blackshire, evidently, did not. A moment before she’d been willing to assign to him the quality of kindness. But keeping Jane from meeting this young man she fancied wasn’t kind. It was heinous. Lord Bankham might very well be a wastrel and a cad, but at the very least Jane should be introduced to him and allowed to make that judgment for herself.

“Jane will be delighted that you have agreed to join us.”

“No, my lord. Delight is dependent upon an element of surprise, and with Jane, I am certain the notion that people will not ultimately do exactly as she desires never enters her stubborn little mind.”

His black eyes sparkled like sunlight glinting on the brook back home. A disarming smile softened the curves of his sharply angled face, and before she could stop herself, Kathryn’s own traitorous features mirrored his pleasant expression. She saw his eyes open wider and his lips parted, revealing even, white teeth.

She wanted to kiss him again.

The desire welled up suddenly, taking her completely by surprise.

Kathryn did her best to hammer her own features back into a semblance of poised indifference and forced herself to hold his gaze. Obviously noting her sudden change of demeanor, Blackshire coughed softly, straightened, and pulled a frown, but his eyes could not hide his mirth, and his dimples were deep enough to take shelter in.

And then he winked at her.

The scoundrel was mocking her! If he expected her to dissolve into silly giggles, he was mistaken.

“My lord,” Kathryn asked sternly, “why are you so opposed to the idea of your ward marrying Lord Bankham?”

“Ah. You know his name, then. Jane has already confided in you.” He appeared not to have noticed her tone of voice. A smile still lurked upon his face as he went on. “Well, as to marrying Jane off, I cannot declare the idea unappealing. It would be a relief to burden some other poor devil with the responsibility of riding herd over Jane. But Bankham is not the right man for her.”

“Shouldn’t Jane be the one to decide that, my lord?”

“No. Not at her age.”

“What do you propose to do, lock her away and introduce her to the man she will marry on her wedding day?”

“Oh.” He raised a mocking brow. “Why, I hadn’t considered that, but I shall give the notion some thought. Thank you.”

Blast him and all men with his attitude! They refused to recognize innate good sense when it marched forward and planted them a facer. Certainly Jane entertained fantasies—but only because that was all she was allowed to entertain as of yet! Kathryn knew how that felt. She doubted there was a girl alive who did not. If she had been allowed to have her London Season when she should have, she would not be in the mess she was in right now. Drat it. She shoved her teacup onto its saucer with a clatter and found the motion so satisfying that she gave the entire tray a second shove. But the tray slid across the slick, shiny waxed table and onto the floor, shattering the delicate teacup and its saucer and sending brown tea flooding into the carpet.

“Botheration!” She knelt to pick up the broken pieces. Blackshire just stood where he was, and Kathryn did her best to ignore him.

“Do you always clean up after yourself like that?” he asked blandly. “The maids are employed for occasions such as this.” His tone suggested that he found her fussing with the growing stain on the carpet distasteful.

“Do you always leave your messes for others to take care of?” she tossed back at him, keeping her head bent to her task.

“Actually . . . no. No, I do not.”

She gave him a look that clearly said she didn’t believe him. But he smiled and knelt beside Kathryn, helping to move the broken pieces of teacup back onto the tray and then blotting the tea-soaked carpet with the napkin.

“I should call for a housemaid,” Kathryn said. “That stain should be treated with—”

“Bicarbonate of soda. Yes. I know. Do not forget and let it dry, for if you do, she shall have to work twice as hard to get it out.”

Her hands stilled then, and she looked up at him wonderingly. He frowned. “What?”

“I . . . well, I just wouldn’t have imagined you would know about such things, or that you would ever give a thought to the maid’s—ouch!” Kathryn jerked her hand away, and it immediately blossomed red with blood. A shard of the cup had cut her little finger. She hadn’t any time to snatch a napkin from the tea tray before a drop of her blood ran down her finger. Quickly, she drew her injured hand over her lap, where the blood dripped with a crimson splash onto the snowy muslin of her new dress. “Ohhh . . . that stain will be impossible to get out. I’ve ruined this lovely dress.”

“I think not,” Blackshire said. Taking up the napkin, he moved closer and pulled her hand into his lap. Quickly, efficiently, he examined the injury before wrapping the injured finger in the square of linen and pressing her hand with his own. His skin was warm and dry and felt silky against hers.

“Wha—what are you doing?” she stammered.

“I am stanching the flow of blood.”

“The cut is not large.”

“No, but it is deep. What did you think I was doing with your hand in mine?”

Kathryn stared at his fingers where they made contact with hers, for it did not feel like any normal human touch. Where she should have felt flesh, she felt only fire. More proof that he was a demon, she thought.

But even demons, she supposed, could deliver medical assistance.

He shifted his hand to apply firmer pressure to the wound with his middle finger, a move freeing his thumb, which he used to trace tiny, slow circles in the sensitive skin on the back of her hand. She snapped her eyes up to his face, but he was staring hard at the floor and did not seem to notice what his own hand was doing. Or if he did, he obviously did not think it extraordinary. Kathryn tried to relax and ignore it, too, but she found it impossible. The circles widened to span the breadth of her hand, and his brushing touch grew lighter, until, instead of trying to ignore it, she was almost straining to discern it. Outside, the birds stopped singing, the wind stopped blowing, the rain stopped falling, the world stopped turning.

And Kathryn stopped breathing.

“Iodine,” he intoned. Their eyes met and he shrugged. “A little secret I learned from our old housekeeper when I was a boy. She put me to work whenever my parents were away.”

“You? Cleaning stains and polishing furniture?”

“Lemon juice and fuller’s earth. Works wonders on wax.” He threw her a wry smile. “I am not the blackguard you seem to think I am.”

“So Jane tells me. She dotes on you. Tell me, my lord, do you return her regard at all? Or do you scorn her privately as well as publicly?”

“You do me an injustice. Young ladies such as Jane,” he said quietly, “can be tiresome at times. But they can also be very charming, even . . . beguiling. I suppose that is why I am willing to drive in the park with them.”

Kathryn knew she should jerk her hand away. He spoke softly then, his voice somehow more of a caress than even his gentle hand. “If Jane were to exhibit good sense . . . as you do . . . I might be willing to”—he squeezed her hand—”to travel much farther.”

His meaning was clear. Where she knew her heart should sting with icy disdain, she felt her heart pulse with a warm glow. She stared at his fingers wrapped around hers and whispered, “Don’t touch me.”

“Don’t tempt me,” he echoed and leaned toward her.

She snatched her hand from his and clutched the napkin to her own injury. “I . . . you . . . you must leave now, as Lady Jane has gone, and we are quite alone. I do not think Lady Marchman would approve. And,” she said with a toss of her head, “neither do I.”

NIGEL BLINKED, AND his head cleared suddenly, as though he’d been under a spell. By the devil! She was giving him the shove-off! He stood, bowed stiffly, and quit the room without another word. He stepped outside and moved to his carriage, where his tiger, James, a boy of eleven, appeared to be half asleep. He was sitting with his back to the trunk of an old oak tree, next to another, smaller boy—Lady Marchman’s young stable boy Thomas, Nigel clarified as he approached. They both appeared to be nodding off. A ball, improvised from a tight wad of rags, sat motionless between them, and it was obvious the two of them had tired themselves out playing together. James’s fingers were much too loose around the reins of Nigel’s pair of high-strung blacks. Nigel issued a sharp rebuke and climbed into the seat. He jerked the reins from the startled tiger’s hands, and the poor boy barely had time to scramble aboard the back of the carriage before Nigel whipped the horses into a brisk and reckless gallop.

Nigel was incensed, though he didn’t know whom he was more furious with, himself or the young groom.

As the carriage rolled along, Nigel’s ire cooled, and after a time he was left with only mild irritation.