The Dangerous Lord (8 page)

Sara handed her a cup of tea, then gestured to an ancient but comfortable sofa near the fireplace. As they seated themselves, Sara smiled at her. “I was astonished to discover you'd already met Ian. But I suppose I shouldn't have been. With his recent search for a wife, I'm sure he attends many of the same social gatherings as you.” Sara leaned forward and added, “The two of you seem quite comfortable together. I hadn't realized you knew each other so well.”

Felicity started to protest the conclusion the countess had clearly drawn, then caught herself. This might be her chance to learn more about the progress of his courtship of Katherine since Lord X's article had appeared in the
Gazette
. Katherine and her parents hadn't been “at home” to anyone recently, even her.

She dropped her gaze in seeming embarrassment. “It was my understanding that Lord St. Clair had already found a wife. Isn't he seriously courting Miss Hastings?”

Sara hesitated, as if debating what to say. Then she set down her teacup. “Yes, he was. But I have it on good authority that he isn't any longer.”

Elation swept through Felicity. Her article had worked! Katherine was free of him! “Has Miss Hastings broken with him, then? I can't blame her, you know—there seemed to be no deep affection between them.”

“I think you're right. His reasons for seeking a wife—the usual ones of needing an heir and perhaps some companionship—didn't require deep affection. I suppose he thought Miss Hastings would fill the position well enough.”

“Not well enough if he's keeping a mistress,” Felicity mumbled without thinking.

Sara shot her an interested look. “Ah, so you
did
read
that article in the
Gazette
. You pretended otherwise at lunch.”

This time Felicity's embarrassment was genuine. At a loss for words to explain why she'd taunted Lord St. Clair, she hesitated.

Thankfully, Sara didn't wait for an explanation. “I understand your feelings. It did seem rather blatant of him to flaunt a mistress while he courted someone. But Ian explained the situation to all of us today.” She smiled sheepishly. “We wouldn't stop teasing him about his newfound fame, so he finally told us the entire story. I suppose I shouldn't discuss it, but I hate to see Ian unfairly accused.”

Felicity's ears pricked up. “Unfairly?”

“Yes. You see, the situation isn't at all as that newspaper person said. Ian was simply helping a friend of the family.” She tapped her chin thoughtfully. “I believe he said the woman was the wife of a compatriot during the war. Or was it the man's sister?” She shook her head. “In any case, after Ian's friend died, the poor woman fell on hard times, and Ian stepped in to help. Ian's like that. A very generous man.”

Felicity had to stifle a snort. Lord St. Clair's friends were as gullible as they were loyal if they believed the story he'd tried to pass off on her. “I would never have guessed that Lord St. Clair had served during the war. He doesn't seem the type.”

“It did take us by surprise.” Sara hastened to add, “Not that he would fight, he's not a coward or anything. We were merely surprised he never told us about it.”

“I dare say he's modest about his accomplishments,” Felicity remarked dryly. It was easy to be modest about nonexistent accomplishments.

“Ian is indeed modest. And it upset me to hear how he'd been misrepresented in the paper.” She sighed. “I don't think it did him any harm, however. If anything, it might have saved him from making a terrible mistake. Apparently,
his prospective fiancée had her own side interests.”

“What do you mean?”

“You haven't heard? Everyone in London was talking of it this morning—or so said Emily, my sister-in-law. Emily and my brother Jordan live close by here, you see. They came in from town this morning and stopped by on their way home. Emily and I talked privately, and she told me the most astonishing news.” Sara leaned forward with a conspiratorial air. “According to her…”

I
an scanned the Worthings' crowded ballroom with an expert eye. How he tired of this bloody pointless endeavor. Only one thing kept him playing the wife-hunting game—the knowledge that if he didn't, he'd be handing his father's legacy to a man with the character of a snake.

He spotted an insipid woman bedecked in virginal white lace and couldn't repress a shudder. To think he'd come to this—surveying eligible women at a Christmas ball. He should never have delayed the search so long. After Father's death, when he'd first heard the terms of the will, he'd wasted precious months searching for a legal means to overturn it. The laws of entail should have protected him. But his grandfather's untimely death when his father was a child had prevented the man from carrying on the entail to Ian, leaving his father in a position to do as he liked.
And in his usual manipulative fashion, Father had done exactly that, leaving a most abominable will. Ian's realization that he couldn't break it had fallen heavily upon him.

Reluctantly, angrily, he'd sought a wife who could give him the heir he needed to fulfill the will's terms. To his surprise, he'd found he was a very ineligible bachelor, thank to all the absurd rumors. Too many people had speculated viciously about his abrupt departure from England. Too many others had whispered that he'd spied for the French.

Refuting so many long-standing rumors was impossible, especially when he had no wish to talk about what he'd actually done all those years. Besides, discussion of his activities on the Continent might provoke discussion of why he'd fled England, and that was unacceptable.

Thankfully, his unfailing attempts to behave like the perfect gentleman in the past year had softened public opinion toward him, though many people still distrusted him with their daughters. Many agreed with Miss Taylor's belief that all smoke signaled fire. Some probably saw past his façade into the howling blackness beneath.

And now two of his choices had run off with other men. Two others he'd offered for had refused him after his damned uncle paid their parents a visit.

No doubt Uncle Edgar had thought Ian wouldn't hear of his cowardly attempts to undermine Ian's search for a wife. But Uncle Edgar didn't know how much his nephew had changed in the past years. Ian was no longer the hotheaded nineteen-year-old who'd run off out of pride and stubbornness. This time he would stay and fight. He wouldn't let that bastard drag Chesterley into the ground the way he'd done his own estate. If Ian couldn't find a wife in time, he'd publicly reveal the truth about the man, even if it meant destroying himself in the process. He'd send himself to hell if that's what it took to put Edgar Lennard there, too.

Unfortunately, he now had another troublesome person to contend with. His gaze fixed on a laughing figure across the ballroom. Miss Taylor. Dressed in a modest gown more suited to a simpering virgin than a firebrand spinster, she stood with society's most accomplished rumormongers. Lady Brumley. Lord Jameson. The March sisters.

Miss Taylor was the only one among them with any sparkle or style. Given her disheveled attire at their first meeting, that surprised him. Tonight, she'd taken every care with her appearance. Her pearl-encrusted slippers were most certainly costly, her jewels tasteful and elegant, and her hair swept up by a pearl pin much more sophisticated than the two pencils she'd sported yesterday. Candlelight heightened the glow of good health on her cheeks, glancing off the creamy satin that sheathed a body even a courtesan would envy.

Bloody hell—he was thinking of her in those terms again. What dangerous idiocy. Witness the way he'd missed half his shots after luncheon today, caught up in thoughts of nonsensical things like the sudden sunrise of her smile when Sara praised her father's designs. Or the impish gleam in her eye when she'd pretended not to have read the gossip she'd written about him.

Damn the bloody woman for being so adept at invading his thoughts. And why must he feel this cursed attraction to her? It made no sense. She was a plague upon society and all good sense, a woman who traded on her father's reputation to plunder the lives of anyone so foolish as to speak to her. Even now, she conversed with Lady Brumley, sometimes dubbed the Galleon of Gossip because of her large frame and equally large mouth, not to mention her tendency to wear outrageous hats with a nautical motif. He could imagine the dirty byways their discussion wandered in.

“So you met Miss Taylor at her home, did you?” a female voice asked at his side. Without looking, he recog
nized the lavender scent of Jordan's wife, Emily.

Her question demonstrated why sexual attraction was dangerous. If his mind had been clear this afternoon, he wouldn't have underestimated Miss Taylor's audacity. In trying to force her into a lie, he'd instead tempted her to tell the truth, and that had caused him no small inconvenience in twisting her answer to cover up his sins.

Dragging his gaze from Miss Taylor was more difficult than he would've liked. “I see you've been talking to Sara. Yes, I met Miss Taylor at her home. I respected her father a great deal.”

“Did you really? Come now, Ian, I doubt you ever even met Algernon Taylor.”

Ian shrugged. “I needn't have met the man to admire him and his work.”

“You must have admired him enormously to pay his daughter a condolence call. You never call on anyone without a purpose.”

She knew him too well. “Be careful, my nosy friend,” he said lightly. “You're dabbling in matters beyond your purview.”

Emily arched one blond eyebrow, then glanced across the ballroom at Miss Taylor. “She's very pretty, isn't she?”

Pretty
didn't begin to describe her. The girls who tittered and flirted with him were pretty. She was energy itself, vital, alive, like a scarlet rose among pastel lilies.

But roses had thorns, and Miss Taylor's thorns were tipped with poison.

“She doesn't interest me, I assure you.” Amazing that he could speak the blatant lie with a straight face. And more amazing still that it was a lie.

“What a shame. You seem to interest
her
.”

That startled him. “What do you mean?”

“According to Sara, she was full of questions about you, especially when she heard that you are once again an eligible bachelor.”

He groaned. “I should've known Jordan couldn't keep a confidence from you—”

“Don't blame
him
for it. The news was circulating before I even left London this morning. Did you really think a family could keep an elopement quiet for long?”

“I suppose not.” So Miss Taylor knew the entire affair now. The bloody witch probably congratulated herself over her success. So why hadn't that quelled her obsession with ruining his life? If she'd been asking about him, it clearly hadn't.

Damn. He must find a new strategy for dealing with her.

“Miss Taylor had read that beastly article about you,” Emily went on, “but Sara set her straight on that matter, too.”

Ian frowned. “Set her straight?”

“Sara thought you might appreciate it if an unattached female like Miss Taylor knew the truth. After you explained to us this morning about your soldier friend and his sister, we were both eager to have the truth known. You're being modest about the situation and your role, but we dislike hearing your character maligned so unfairly.”

It was all Ian could do not to curse aloud. Now Miss Taylor would think him a bigger liar than before. Which, in a way, he was. “As I recall, I asked you to keep that story to yourselves to protect my friend's privacy.”

Emily cast him a sidelong glance. “And we'll do so. Sara merely wanted to help. You
have
been looking for a wife, after all. It's important that eligible women know your true character.”

“Women like Miss Taylor, I suppose?”

“Of course.” Emily batted her fan a few times. “Surely you won't balk at marrying a respectable woman simply because she has no great claim to fortune or birth. If you're looking for a wife, Miss Taylor wouldn't be a bad choice.”

He wanted to laugh. Marriage to Miss Taylor would be sheer disaster. With her loose tongue, penchant for digging
up secrets, and delight in skewering men of rank, in less than a week—no, a day—after the wedding she'd be nosing into his affairs.

Besides, she'd never agree to marry him. The little he'd gleaned about her indicated that her father had left her a substantial inheritance, so money was no incentive. And since she thought him a profligate and a town rake, a man who lived to debauch women and humiliate his fiancée, the usual attractions of marriage wouldn't tempt her.

Still, marriage to Miss Taylor would be as entertaining as it would be maddening.

No
, he reproached himself.
That doesn't even bear contemplation
. “You seem to have a very favorable opinion of the woman. Yet you hardly know her.”

“True. But I liked her as soon as Sara introduced us. She's adorable—funny and intelligent and direct. You must admit you're far too somber these days, and certainly too secretive. You need a woman like her to bring you out of yourself. And if, like so many men, you want a wife with a spotless reputation, she has that, too.”

He snorted. “Spotless? I seriously doubt it.”

“Oh?” Emily looked at him with interest. “Do you know something about Miss Taylor the rest of us don't?”

A pity he couldn't tell Emily that Miss Taylor was Lord X. It would serve the loose-tongued creature right to be exposed. But he wasn't ready for open war—yet. “I merely meant that she isn't what she appears.”

“Then you're the only one to think so,” Emily retorted, obviously disappointed by his refusal to reveal more. “No one ever speaks ill of her.”

That was precisely why Miss Taylor moved with impunity through society. She needn't be a member of Almack's. Championed by those of Lady Brumley's ilk, she need only be the daughter of the dashing Algernon Taylor to gain access to prestigious routs and balls and thus to all the gossip she required for her column.

Secure in her anonymity, she dug up old gossip, then passed judgment without ever suffering society's censure. If she'd once been the subject of speculation herself, he doubted she'd be so bloody self-righteous.

Ian stilled. What an intriguing thought—Miss Taylor, the subject of gossip. The strains of a waltz reached his ears, and he began to smile. Perhaps it was time the self-righteous Miss Taylor learned firsthand how easily a situation could be misconstrued.

Without giving himself a chance to question his motives, he excused himself to Emily, then strode purposefully across the room. Ah, yes, he knew exactly how to teach Miss Taylor a much-needed lesson in humility, especially if her reputation was as “spotless” as Emily implied.

As soon as Felicity saw Lord St. Clair heading toward her, she braced herself for trouble. Devil take Katherine! Felicity had risked discovery to prevent her friend from marrying a degenerate, and the woman had run off with her family's steward instead!

If she'd known Mr. Gerard was the object of Katherine's affections, she would never have encouraged it. But she'd naively imagined some squire's son with less fortune than Lady Hastings wished. Not a servant, for pity's sake, who was doubtless a fortune hunter! Drat it all!

Katherine was supposed to turn St. Clair down flat, then marry a man at least marginally suitable to her genteel class. The foolish girl.

Now, for all her trouble, Felicity had a hornet on her tail. No wonder Lord St. Clair had spent luncheon baiting her—he must be furious! She watched him approach with growing unease. The man had an uncanny ability to keep his true feelings buried ten feet under, and that made him more difficult to manage than a man easy to read. If she had any sense at all, she'd run.

A pity she had nowhere to go.

“Lord St. Clair is coming this way, my dear,” Lady
Brumley said beside her, with a nod of her elaborately coiffured head. “Shall I introduce you?”

“Thank you, we've met.” No doubt the marchioness would make much of that. Lady Brumley hadn't reached sixty without learning how to turn the sparest comments into fodder for gossip. Felicity relied on the Galleon of Gossip for half her column, and sometimes wondered if Lady Brumley had guessed who wore Lord X's pants.

God knows, she wished it were anyone but herself just now.

Then the troublesome viscount was upon them, wearing a smile so alarming she could barely manage one in answer. He nodded briefly at the marchioness, then bowed to Felicity. “Miss Taylor, would you do me the honor of dancing with me?”

The scoundrel. He wanted to get her off on the dance floor so he could rail at her, and he knew she dared not refuse with Lady Brumley drinking in every word.

Well, she had to face his wrath some time. “I'd be happy to dance with you,” she lied, extending her hand.
Though I'd be happier still if I'd never met you
.

He led her to the floor with the practiced ease of a gentleman, then settled one hand on the curve of her waist as the other closed tightly around her gloved fingers.

She groaned. God preserve her, she'd agreed to a waltz, and waltzes were
not
her forte. Her dancing in general left much to be desired, but with some figures, like the quadrille, she could follow her fellows and hide her missteps in the crowd. That was impossible with a waltz.