The Wicked Marquess (16 page)

Who was teaching whom a lesson? inquired Master Conscience, who didn’t wish to be disobliging but felt it necessary to point out that only the most degenerate of sinners would debauch such a babe. Benedict ignored this interruption. Time enough to brood about his lack of scruples during the eternity he would spend suffering the torments of the damned as punishment for his participation in tonight’s events.

The marquess wore that look again, as if he was arguing with himself. Miranda reached up and turned his face until his eyes met hers. She wet her lips with her tongue, and then pressed them against his.

Her kiss was tentative, and curious, and incredibly erotic; her hot hard little nipples were burning holes right through his shirt, which despite her best efforts he had managed to keep on. Benedict closed his eyes and tried counting sheep. One ewe. One ram. Two sheep, and a lamb. His hand slid further down her hip, across her flat belly, inched slowly toward the soft skin of her upper thigh. She sighed and let her head fall back. His lips moved from her mouth to her earlobe to the curve of her neck. She tasted like ambrosia. He looked forward to licking his way down her body to her toes. And then Miranda whispered, “Are you going to ruin me now?”

How he wished that he might ruin her. In all the legends told of Sinbad, none suggested that he possessed superhuman self-control. Benedict could not restrain himself much longer without doing permanent damage to both his body and his brain.

Self-control? Restrain himself? He snatched back his hand. Damned if he possessed any more self-control than some untried lad. He should be flogged, tarred and feathered, castrated—

Well, perhaps not that.

“What’s wrong?” Miranda asked.

She was so damned beautiful it pained him, her lips swollen from his kisses and her soft cheeks flushed, her tawny hair disheveled and smelling incongruously of moonlit gardens and stable dirt.

Benedict yanked the blanket up around her chin. “Have one of your young cawkers seduce you, if you are determined on that course.”

Miranda blinked.

The study door suddenly swung open. “Beg pardon, guv, but this gent—” Jem’s face had been scrubbed, and his carroty hair slicked back.

“No need to announce me.” Percy Pettigrew pushed past Jem. “Baird, I forgot—” His bright malicious gaze moved from the clothing strewn across the floor to the little Russell, wearing only a blanket and perched on Sinbad’s lap.

Chapter Twenty

The fog had lifted. Faint tendrils of dawn crept across the sky. Soon yawning bricklayers and chimney-sweeps would set about their business. Sleepy tavern keepers would take down the shutters of early public-houses so the day could properly begin.

A crested carriage clattered through the early morning streets. Two people rode within. One passenger was contemplating the fourth journey of Sinbad, when the intrepid sailor had been shipwrecked, befriended, wed and widowed and entombed with his dead wife, a jug of water, and seven pieces of bread.

The second passenger was indulging in a tantrum. “Perdition!” she raged. “
Why
did you tell Mr. Pettigrew that we are betrothed?”

Benedict took firm hold of her arm lest she fling herself out through the carriage door. “I had to tell him something!” he retorted.

 “Mr. Pettigrew promised he wouldn’t say a word about finding me in your study!” Miranda winced as his fingers dug deeper into her soft flesh.

Benedict eased his grip a little bit. “Finding you on my lap, you mean. Wearing little more than your bare skin. Percy won’t share his discovery with above half a dozen select people who may be trusted to inform the rest of the town. Unless we are very clever, your reputation will be in shreds.”

Miranda glowered. She didn’t understand. Was this scandal not exactly what they had planned? Lord Wexton had been mistaken about which of the sexes was prone to go off in queer starts. No sooner had Mr. Pettigrew been persuaded to leave the house than Benedict had bundled her back into her odiferous clothing and ordered his carriage brought around.

Perhaps when Benedict got over being angry, he could be persuaded to finish seducing her. But first she must convince him that her uncle need not be involved. “There is no reason to tell Kenrick,” Miranda repeated.

Like Jem before him, Benedict regretted that he’d not listened to his mama, or in this case his grandaunt. “Symington is your guardian. How do you propose that we keep him in ignorance? This business will fascinate the gossips. Your uncle must be warned.”

Miranda hadn’t considered how her disgrace must affect her uncle, who had already suffered much embarrassment from the females of his family. She experienced a pang of regret.

She reminded herself that Kenrick had dragged her to London and decreed that she marry Lord Wexton. “You sound as though you never truly wished to ruin me. No matter what you said.”

Lord Baird wished that he had never met Miss Russell. He had been living the leisurely carefree albeit tedious existence of a peer of the realm before Fate flung her at him; he recalled it well. “Contrary to what you believe, even I may not flout society’s rules without consequence. Were I to destroy your reputation, I would destroy what remains of my own at the same time, which would make my grandaunt cross.”

He had not meant to seduce her? Miranda recalled the liberties recently taken with her person. Were not such liberties part and parcel of a young woman’s downfall?

True, she had approached him. She had asked to be led astray. One did not expect a notorious philanderer to withstand any temptation that popped up in his path.

Yet this philanderer had. Miranda said, “I never thought—

“You never
do
think,” he interrupted. “It is one of your less appealing traits. We have no alternative but to go through with the thing and hope that some juicier scandal will soon rear its head.”

“Go through with what?”

“The betrothal, you little idiot!” Benedict snapped.

Miranda punched his shoulder. “But I don’t want to be betrothed to you! I mean, I don’t want you to be betrothed to me! Oh, why did you agree to help me if you didn’t
wish
to?”

After all his efforts to avoid the altar, Benedict finally accepted that he must marry – that he had no choice but to marry – and the young lady to whom he must betroth himself wanted no part of the business. “Damned if I know!” he retorted with such ferocity that his companion lapsed into sullen silence.

The respite did not last long. Miranda resumed her arguments as the carriage pulled up outside her uncle’s house. So very energetic was she in her protests that Benedict shrugged out of his greatcoat – it was turning out to be an unexpectedly useful garment – and dropped it over her head. She cursed and kicked out. He tucked her beneath one arm and carried her into the house.

Sir Kenrick had just come home from an evening spent discussing all manner of important matters in his clubs. He was surprised, at this late hour, to hear voices in his hall. Surprise became astonishment when Lord Baird strode past an equally startled footman and into the drawing room.

The marquess was carrying an unwieldy, squirming, irritated-sounding bundle. Kenrick could not imagine what strange set of circumstances had caused Miranda to be brought home in such a manner. He dismissed the footman. Lord Baird dumped his burden on the floor.

Miranda thrust her head out from the folds of the greatcoat. “I will never forgive you for this!” she cried.

Kenrick glanced from Miranda to the marquess. Both of them were scowling. “I trust that someone is going to explain.”

Miranda thrust out her lower lip. Lord Baird pulled away the greatcoat with a flourish reminiscent of magicians manipulating rabbits and hats. “I found her on my doorstep,” he growled.

Kenrick stared appalled at his niece’s shabby, somewhat odiferous, and distinctly male attire. “You, young woman, will go to your room and stay there while we sort this business out.”

Benedict caught Miranda by her collar before she could escape. “That won’t serve. Unless you bolt the window and lock the stable and cut down the damned tree.”

The stable? The tree? “Hell and the devil confound it!” said Kenrick.

“Just so.” Benedict gave Miranda an irritated shake. “I regret that I must make you some revelations of an unsettling nature, Symington.”

Miranda tried unsuccessfully to wriggle free from her captor. “I want Nonie!” she wailed.

Unsettling revelations? Kenrick yanked the bell cord.

Nonie arrived within moments, a dressing gown thrown on over her nightdress. She blanched at sight of Miranda’s clothes.

All was soon explained, or if not all, enough to make Kenrick aware of the gravity of the situation, not that he didn’t already have a damned good idea. “I suggest that we withdraw to my home in Cornwall,” concluded Benedict. “If Miranda is no longer in London, we may avoid providing further grist for the gossip mills.”

Send Miranda out of the city? Out of the country might be preferable. “I think very poorly of your conduct, Baird!” Kenrick snapped.

“I think damn poorly of it myself,” retorted the marquess. “If you will excuse me, there are arrangements to be made. I will be back within the hour.” He snatched up his greatcoat and strode from the room.

Miranda remained silent, her face buried against Nonie’s shoulder. How could she have been so mistaken in a man? This particular man had taken shameful advantage, not because he’d had her on his lap and kissed her – for a start — but because he had then delivered her up to her uncle. Sinbad was no less perfidious than Mr. Pettigrew.

Kenrick was aware he had been presented a highly expurgated accounting of Lord Baird’s relationship with his niece. “Well, miss, here’s a fine kettle of fish. The marquess has seen fit to do you the honor of asking for your hand in marriage. You will accept.”

Miranda removed herself from Nonie’s shoulder. “I will not. He was just being polite. Oh, confound the man! I do not intend to wed.”

“You should have considered that before you stole out to meet him!” Kenrick retorted. “I am shocked that you would pull such a sly trick. I hope we may manage to get through this without Wexton challenging Baird to a duel.”

Kenrick did not aware just how many sly tricks had been pulled. It might be prudent to leave London before he discovered further details. “Why would Lord Wexton challenge Benedict?” Miranda asked.

Benedict, was it? “It has to do with a gentleman’s honor. You will not understand that, I think. Nor would Baird.”

“Everything possible has gone wrong!” Miranda sighed. “I have compromised poor Benedict, when all I intended was that he should compromise me.”

His niece was as great a curiosity as any housed in the British Museum. Kenrick wished he might shut her up there. “Let me understand this. You
meant
Baird to compromise you?”

“I didn’t want to marry Wexton,” retorted Miranda. “And I knew it was too much to hope that I lacked the family susceptibility. I decided if I was going to be led astray by a rakehell, it should be the rakehell of my own choice. Now everything is spoiled, because I did not mean for him to have to marry me!” She burst into tears.

Awkwardly, Nonie patted her charge. She could have wept herself. Nonie had suspected Miranda’s interest in Lord Baird, but like that strange creature the ostrich, had stuck her head in the sand.

Had Antoinette known of this development? Kenrick thought not. She couldn’t manage the girl. Kenrick didn’t hold it against her. He couldn’t manage the girl himself.

Baird was furious, and with good reason. For a man of his inclinations, Sinbad was surprisingly discrete. The marquess confined his amorous adventures to bored young wives and widows and expensive courtesans while paying eligible young ladies a great deal less attention than their ambitious mamas might have liked. Miranda could not have more neatly trapped him, had she set out to do just that.

She looked very small and sodden, and as cross as a wet cat. Kenrick decided that, whatever her failings, and those failings were legion, Miranda was not sly.

Hopefully, Lord Baird would arrive at that same conclusion. To himself, Kenrick admitted that his niece had a point. Not that she should ruin herself, of course. But that she should ruin herself with Sinbad.

Chapter Twenty-one

Lady Cecilia was in her bedchamber, curled up in a comfortable wing-chair and sipping her morning chocolate, when her cousin strolled into the room. She closed the book she had been reading,
The Life and Adventures of Colonel Hangar
, an enlightening volume written while the colonel languished in King’s Bench Prison for failure to pay his debts. The frontispiece showed the author swinging from a gibbet, fashionably dressed in frock coat and high boots, cockade hat and sword.

Ceci was already sufficiently depressed. She didn’t need to see Percy smirking like the cat that had got into the cream. “You are in good spirits today,” she said.

“I am always in good spirits.” Percy flicked open his snuff-box. “But you, my poor dear Ceci— I had expected to find you prostrated with grief. But here you sit, sipping your chocolate as if you hadn’t a care in the world. Such insouciance! Such fortitude! I make you my compliments, cousin. Unless—” Delicately, he paused. “Can it be you have not heard?”

Lady Cecilia regarded her visitor without favor. “Have not heard what?”

Percy raised a pinch of snuff to one nostril. “Why, the latest
on-dit
concerning Miss Russell.” He inhaled. “And Baird.”

What
about
Baird and Miss Russell? Unlikely that Percy would part with information any quicker if Ceci boxed his ears. “I was on the scene,” he added, when she remained stubbornly silent. “Front and center, as it were. Therefore, I am privy to the truth of the affair. I had sensed which way the wind was blowing, and so I warned you, if you will recall. Another innocent has lost her way in the seething slough of fashionable society, alas.”

How had she ever found Percy’s proverbs and provocations amusing? “What are you going on about?”