The Devilish Pleasures of a Duke (8 page)

And since she’d made it painfully clear she wished nothing further to do with him, he would have to be a little more subtle about how he went about it. He would have to prove himself to her. As he’d never bothered about making an impression before, and as he was anything but subtle in manner, he perceived he had a problem.

So he loitered in bed a little longer, studying the church spires and gray sky through the window.

Unfortunately, he had not pondered long before another visitor interrupted his concentration. He groaned inwardly as he recognized Emma’s cousin, Sir Gabriel Boscastle, a handsome gambler and hard-seasoned soldier with a dark sense of humor who had walked on the dangerous side of life a few times himself. He’d been at odds with his London cousins in the past. It appeared the two factions of the family had made amends. “Look at our little patient. I heard you ruined a perfectly good chair with your head yesterday.”

Adrian snorted. Gabriel was a man’s man, a lady’s man, and had lived as many years on the fringe of Society as he had. “I might just jump out of bed and throttle the next person who reminds me of that humiliating fact.”

Gabriel broke into a grin. “At least they’ve got your head resting on pretty silk cushions. Would you like me to bring you some flowers?”

Adrian laughed reluctantly. “I thought I might start reading fashion magazines.”

“All jesting aside, are you all right?” Gabriel inquired, swinging his long legs over a stool.

“How do I look?”

Gabriel shook his head. “Damned peculiar on that chaise, I have to say. Why are you still here, anyway?”

“I suppose I am easily amused.”

Gabriel lowered his voice. He’d been born with the dark Boscastle beauty and passion for life. “You don’t know what you’re up against.”

Adrian angled forward, his interest piqued. “Explain.”

“Escape, my friend, while you have the chance. This is not a place for men like us who value their freedom.”

“I suppose you’re referring to the young ladies of the academy,” Adrian retorted. “I believe I can keep them at bay.”

“Hell, not them,” Gabriel said rudely. “I mean the headmistress, Emma. Get out of this house and run for your life before her gloves of doom grasp you in their dainty but deadly clutches.”

Now Adrian’s curiosity was not merely piqued, it was aroused uncontrollably. “Run from Emma? She’s half my size,” he mused. And more than twice his weight in spirit.

Gabriel smiled darkly. “Once she realizes what a miserable past you’ve led, she will move heaven and earth to make your life one of duty and decency.”

Adrian cleared his throat. He liked what little he knew of Gabriel. But, frankly, he was more intrigued by his dire threats of Emma’s intentions than discouraged. “I must say, Gabriel, if she tried to redeem you, it doesn’t seem to have worked.”

“Some of us are beyond redemption,” Gabriel replied, unoffended. “I try to avoid her notice as much as possible. Of course you don’t have much choice. You do know what the family calls her? The Dainty Dictator.”

Adrian hid his amusement behind a bland expression. It occurred to him that Emma had developed her leadership skills of necessity in a family of dominant personalities. A wilting violet would perforce be trampled at an early age in this clan.

“I suppose I would have done the same thing yesterday if I saw her insulted,” Gabriel mused. “Mind you, I think you should have ducked before ruining that chair.”

“That’s good advice.” Adrian suddenly reached back for a cushion to hurl at Gabriel’s chest. “Duck.”

Gabriel caught the cushion with a grin. “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you. Lying here wounded makes you an ideal target for one of Emma’s improving crusades. It’s truly painful when she decides to redeem you because, well, because there’s something about her that makes a man wish he could be better. She lectures you. You pretend to listen, and then before you know it, you start hearing her voice, like an angel of conscience on your shoulder, just when you’re tempted to have a good time.”

“Well, she won’t have any luck with us in the long run, will she?”

“Not in my opinion.” Gabriel tossed the cushion back onto the chaise. “But that doesn’t mean she won’t take up the challenge and put us through torment in the meantime.”

Adrian laughed. No one in his memory had ever taken him as a cause. It sounded almost pleasant.

“She improves young girls, Gabriel. Not battle-scarred soldiers like you and me.”

Gabriel backed toward the door. “Now there’s a thought. She can buff you up with beeswax for one of her debutantes. I might even suggest it to her before I leave.”

“Why, in God’s name?”

Gabriel grinned. “Because as long as she’s got her hands occupied with one sinner, she’s not likely to try reforming me. Don’t let her delicate appearance fool you, Adrian. Emma is the equal of her brothers when it comes to having her way.”

Emma’s temples began to pound with tension. Why had she been possessed to think she could change a girl from the gutters of Seven Dials into a gentlewoman?

A peek at Lord Wolverton while he slept.

Had he even been asleep? “What time did you perpetrate this unforgivable intrusion, Harriet?” she asked in a choked voice.

Harriet shrugged her thin shoulders. “Not long after you walked your nightly patrol.”

“It is not a patrol,” Emma said in vexation. “Did Lord Wolverton awaken during your misdeed?” she demanded.

“Didn’t you ’ear him?” Harriet asked with a grin. “He roared to bring down the walls.”

“You should send her back to the slums, Lady Lyons,” Lydia Potter suggested. “My parents would be ever so upset if they knew I was rubbing shoulders with the likes of her.”

Harriet smirked. “I’m sticking a big brown spider up yer nose while you’re asleep tonight—”

Emma took hold of Harriet’s arm. “You shall do nothing of the kind. Please, Harriet, do behave.”

“Why do you even bother?” Harriet asked, as if it were a question she’d heard a thousand times in her life. “I’m a hopeless cause. Everyone knows that. I’m only gonna come to a bad end and bring the rest of you down with me. Why bleedin’ bother?”

She spoke the words without pity or even defiance, as though she’d long ago resigned herself to the fact. Emma found herself torn. She had an obligation to her paying students, the vow she had made to their parents, that their daughters would emerge from their cocoons of awkwardness into enchanting social butterflies.

But nobody wanted to help the street girls of London, the orphans, the abandoned, the abused. Were they truly hopeless? Surely not all. Surely a woman of conscience could not sleep at night without trying.

She released Harriet’s arm. “I shall attempt one more time.” She picked up her manual from her desk. “‘The invention of eating utensils such as the spoon precedes the wheel.’”

“Well, hell,” Harriet said. “Who’d have guessed? Or cared, for that matter?”

Emma continued as if she had not noticed the interruption. “Does anyone know what is said to distinguish a gentleman—and I cringe even using the term—from a clodpate?”

“His ancestors?” Miss Butterfield asked brightly.

“No.” Emma allowed a fleeting look of disdain to settle upon her aristocratic face. “It is the use of a fork—”

“A fork,” Harriet said. “Well, blow me down with a friggin’ feather.”

“—over a spoon,” Emma continued calmly. “The
use
of a fork over a spoon separates the gentleman from his lessers. And I daresay we still raise countrymen on our proud island who may as well eat with a shovel, so abysmal are their table manners.”

Harriet regarded her wistfully. “Lady Lyons, if you honestly think that using a spoon to eat is the worst crime a man can commit, I would be willing to enlighten you otherwise.”

“Please, don’t,” Emma said quickly. She pressed her knuckle to the tickling vein beneath her right eyebrow. Her head felt as if it might indelicately explode. “Actually, I think this is a good time for you girls to gather your shawls and take a walk in the garden with your sketchbooks. I shall expect each of you to draw in detail whatever object of beauty catches your eye.”

“I know what Harriet is going to draw,” Miss Butterfield said in a disgruntled voice.

Harriet snorted. “Well, I wouldn’t be the first one in this ’ouse to draw it, I can tell you that.”

“Go upstairs, Harriet,” Emma said tersely. “Read a book or…take a nap.”

“A nap?”

“Under no conditions are you to disturb Lord Wolverton again, do you hear?”

“Anything to please you.”

“Good gracious,” Charlotte said, hurriedly throwing on her cloak as the girls filed out of the room. “I shall have to accompany them. Harriet is liable to start a revolt if left unsupervised.”

Emma sighed. “I know.”

“What are you going to do about her, Emma? She’s quite incorrigible.”

“I’m not sure.”

“I should be tempted to turn her out on her ear.”

“I am tempted, believe me. And, yes, I know everyone thinks I’m a trifle mad for trying to reform a street girl in the first place. Perhaps I am.”

“Perhaps everyone else is wrong,” Charlotte gave her a sympathetic smile. “You’ve worked wonders on some of your students.”

“I’ve had modest success.”

She had, in fact, done her duty by the three other altruistic cases she’d undertaken. One had become a competent housekeeper; her sister had married a judge. The third was a dedicated schoolmistress in Gloucester who was engaged to an apothecary.

No one knew how those minor triumphs had lifted Emma’s spirits. How her personal mission to transform all of England into a haven for the refined had lifted her above the pall of grief that had befallen her when she had lost a brother, her father, and her husband in a short span of time.

Perhaps it was sheer Boscastle arrogance, believing herself imbued with the power to improve others.

At least in her case, as opposed to the behavior of her siblings, she had channeled that Boscastle spirit into a force for the good of humankind.

Until last night.

Last night…when she had proven, if only to herself, that Emma Boscastle really wasn’t any different, or any better, than the rest of her scandal-prone family. She might well be the most wicked of the lot, and if this were true, well, there would be no one in the family to take her to task.

Adrian rubbed the thick towel against his smooth jaw. His valet, Bones, could shave a man in under a minute. He could behead one, too, if it came to it, which had been a useful talent for a mercenary’s subaltern and makeshift undertaker, but one that would hardly stand him in good stead with English Society. He and Bones had met while defending East Indiamen from French pirates on the Persian Gulf, their duty having been to discourage the growth of French industry. A year later Bones had lost an eye while defending Lahore and had consequently offered to sail as Adrian’s valet to Java under the orders of Stamford Ruffles. Bones had done his part to enable the British to conquer Batavia.

“How do I look?” Adrian inquired, stooping to examine his face in the gilt-edged cheval glass.

“The very picture of health, my lord.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

“I beg your pardon.”

Adrian regarded his sun-burnished complexion in disgruntlement. “I don’t look as if there’s a thing wrong with me.”

“Indeed, you do not,” his valet agreed. “I thought you said you’d never felt better in your life, that something had happened to snap you out of the doldrums.”

“Damnation.”

“My lord?” Bones asked, busily repackaging his soaps and blades.

“You dressed a few men for their funerals after battle in the Punjab, didn’t you?” Adrian asked.

“Alas, more than a few. It was the least I could do, with no professional to prepare their bodies for burial. I viewed it as an artistic compassion. Remember that at one time, I had hoped to work in the theater—”

“Do you think you could make me look a little less wholesome?” Adrian interrupted. “Not deathly ill, you understand. But a trifle poorly. A man you’d feel needed a little tenderness.”

“I could make you look as if you had been trampled by a herd of elephants,” Bones said with a contemplative air. “Or by a stagecoach, considering we are back in what one arguably calls the civilized world.”

“I doubt we need go to those extremes,” Adrian said pensively. “An impression of underlying malaise will suffice for my purposes.”

Thankfully Bones did not inquire what those purposes might be. He was already poking about the pots of rouge and rice paper that sat in neat rows upon the dressing table. “Ah, if I could only find a little ceruse—are you quite sure about this, my lord? The physician is waiting outside the door. He will insist you remain in bed if you appear un-well. I know how idleness displeases you.”

Adrian dropped down onto the chaise, tilting his head back in anticipation. “I shall simply have to take his advice if he does, won’t I? Who am I to argue with a superior mind?”

It seemed to Emma that scarcely fifteen minutes of relative peace had elapsed before another crisis presented itself. Charlotte intercepted her at the door, her cheeks high with color.

“I was just on the way into the garden.” Emma was tying the ribbons of her low-crowned silk bonnet beneath her chin. “Have the girls settled down?”

“The girls are fine.” Charlotte paused to catch her breath.

“That reminds me, Charlotte. Did the earl’s niece send any more news of when she would arrive? I should hate for her to witness a scene such as that with Harriet on her first day. When she—”

Charlotte broke in quietly. “It’s
him.
”

“What?” And yet deep inside she knew. How could she not when nothing else had occupied her thoughts?

“It’s Lord Wolverton.” Charlotte’s voice was soft but distraught. “I heard the footmen asking about the house for Heath. It seems the physician has just finished examining Lord Wolverton and fears he’s taken a turn for the worse. He did warn us this could happen.”

“Oh, no.” A chill raised gooseflesh on her arms. “He looked so…vital when I saw him last night.” Rather too vital. “I should have visited him personally this morning. This is all my fault.”