To Charm a Naughty Countess (26 page)

London was never at its best in autumn. Much as Caroline loved the City, she was willing to admit that.

Four weeks had passed since she left Lancashire, narrow weeks of vivid silks cloaking bleak moods. The silks and the moods were equally of her choosing, for she had spent those weeks at the home of her dear friend and cousin Frances and Frances’s husband, Henry. Henry was an artist by training, and he and Frances took students together. Consequently, their cottage was always full of bright paintings, some lovely, some lamentable.

It had been a comforting visit, friendly and familial. Caroline admired the life her old friend had built. But there was nothing so cozy waiting for Caroline herself. The man who had offered her the chance to be needed… well, he needed nothing from her except her money. Since Miss Cartwright would do as well in that regard, he might even be married to her already.

She wished them well. Somewhat.

As Caroline’s carriage rolled up to her narrow Albemarle Street house, she saw no color in the world but gray. The sky dropped cold drizzle, ruffling and spraying behind the wheels as they rolled down muddy streets. Her stuccoed house appeared the dull color of an old bone.

A footman let down the carriage steps for her, then helped her hop down under the cover of an umbrella held by her watchful butler, Pollitt. She could not help but remember the time she rode home with Michael, when she had much, much more to look forward to than a solitary evening in a poorly lit house.

Her heart didn’t seem to beat in time with the City’s tonight. Maybe because she had been gone for so long, or maybe because she’d left her heart behind her.

Such reflections were not helping her mood either.

Under Pollitt’s sheltering umbrella, she bustled up her front steps and inside the house. Once in her entry hall, things seemed a bit more cheerful. Her chandelier—not Venetian glass like Lady Kettleburn’s, but lovely all the same—cast its hot little lights down on her, brightening the tiles of the floor and the plaster and paper on the walls.

She looked around as though she were a purchaser seeing it for the first time. Narrow, stretching steps. Glossy marble and clean white trim. Blue plaster and dentated moldings.

She had arranged this house to her liking, and here she would probably live out her life. Surely there was nothing so melancholy about that. She had been alone before. It was nothing she couldn’t handle.

“I’m for bed, Pollitt,” she sighed.

Tonight she was too tired. She would handle it in the morning.

***

In the morning, Caroline awoke with renewed purpose. There was no need to be lonely just because she had fallen in love with a stubborn man who was a stranger to all feelings but honor and duty.

She covered her face with a pillow, as though she could smother her own feelings. But it only made her recall his presence in her bed. It made her wish to breathe him in, his scent as clean and sharp as desire itself.

Damnable man.

He would be difficult to forget again—more difficult than ever before, because he was twined through her wholly, body and heart and mind. But forget him she would. Eventually. She just needed the right distraction.

She tossed the pillow aside and slid from her bed, then padded across her room and retrieved her heavy red banyan from her wardrobe. She shrugged into it as she crossed to her writing desk.

There, lined up next to her writing paper, was the penknife Michael had used to cut her corset strings.

Caroline shook off this reminder, which brought with it an unwelcome plummet of the stomach. She rang for her maid, ordered a bracing amount of coffee and toast, and set to work.

An hour later, the coffee and toast were gone, and she had scrawled and sealed a tidy pile of notes. She nodded her satisfaction. Now she only needed to get ready for her grand new plan.

***

At two o’clock that afternoon, Caroline Graves, the dowager Countess of Stratton, stood in her drawing room awaiting her callers. She had taken great care with her appearance. Her hair was a neatly coiled mass of honey-gold; her dress was elegant but demure, a Paris-green silk with a high waist, beaded bodice, and long sleeves trimmed with gold lace. With emeralds at her ears and around her throat, she knew she looked regal. Respectable. Ready to conquer.

When she heard a tread on the stair, she lifted her chin and smiled her brightest, most welcoming smile.

In the doorway appeared the fair head of Lady Kettleburn—wife to a much older baron, hostess of that fateful ball at which Michael and Caroline had discovered one another. Gowned in a silk of her favorite pale blue shade, the baroness looked as frosty as the weather. “How do you do, your ladyship?” The stiffness of her greeting was another icicle.

“Come, none of this formality.” Caroline took the younger woman’s hand. “As you’re first to arrive, Lady Kettleburn, you must pick the best chair. I can tell you
not
to choose that spindly beech chair in the corner. It will positively reshape your spine.”

The baroness permitted herself a small smile, and Caroline pressed her advantage. “I’ve heard that you are fond of a lemon tart, as am I. My cook is rather vain about her abilities with pastry. Won’t you give one a try?”

Today Caroline had taken as much care with the room as with her own appearance. Instead of the customary hothouse blooms from her callers, every surface had been covered instead with eatables—trays of pastries, small sandwiches—all arrayed on her favorite Sheffield plate tea service. There was something very welcoming, she thought, about a groaning platter of food.

By the time Caroline had finished plying her first guest with confections and assuring the young lady she had selected the best chair, Lady Halliwell had arrived.

“Darling!” Caroline called. “You are wearing peach again. How lovely you look.” Lady Halliwell was too round of feature for true beauty, but she was cheerful, which was quite as good. Caroline did not exaggerate the effect on that lady’s appearance; the light color warmed Lady Halliwell’s hair and brought a lovely rose into her cheeks. As this new guest beamed and air-kissed Caroline’s cheek in greeting, Caroline marveled at the ability of a simple compliment to make not only one person happier, but two.

One after another, women arrived, filling the drawing room not with the booted feet and raucous laughter of suitors, but with demure low voices and the costly click of bugled trim on lacquered furniture.

This was Caroline’s grand plan: she would rediscover the joys of friendship. As much as possible, she would surround herself with kind and delightful people. In time, they might assuage her feeling of loss as substitute suitors never could.

For Michael was right; her puppy suitors brought her no real pleasure. Instead, there was a pleasure in being needed within the scope of a drawing room. Keeping conversation flowing, introducing new acquaintances, making sure every lady had her favorite sweet and beverage. If Caroline made sure they had a wonderful time, they would come back. They would invite her to their homes too. And eventually, she might end with friends. Not just friendly acquaintances, but people who truly cared about Caroline herself, as Lady Tallant did.

Well, about Caroline and about her cook’s lemon tarts.

If there was some initial awkwardness between nodding acquaintances as the drawing room filled, cup after cup of sweetened tea and a few amusing anecdotes about the rigors of travel to and from Lancashire helped to honey over any rough spots.

“And then,” Caroline concluded, leaning forward with just the right air of intimacy, “the innkeeper
let
the
coachman
into
my
room
, as though we were… well, you know.” She rolled her eyes dramatically, and Augusta Meredith giggled. Even Lady Kettleburn pressed her lips together to smother a laugh.

Jovial Lady Applewood chuckled. “It wouldn’t be such a bad thing if the coachman was good-looking, would it? You being a widow, I mean, rather than an unmarried girl.” Again, she laughed. “Do you all want to hear a story that will
really
curl your hair?”

The fifteen minutes allotted for a visit of mere courtesy were long past, Caroline noticed. Yet her guests made no move to go, as the marchioness began a bawdy tale about the France of forty years earlier, in which she had slipped away from her mother to explore Paris and found herself, a maiden, alone in the Moulin Rouge.

“I surely would have been ruined,” Lady Applewood continued, her plump bosom jiggling within the velvet casing of her gown. “But for Wyverne, that is.” She pressed a hand to her heart and allowed herself a soft sigh.

Caroline’s own heart flipped. “Wyverne?” Just in time, she remembered to lift her brows in an expression of mild curiosity.

“Oh, yes.” The older woman winked broadly at the room. “Not the present duke, of course, but his father. Such a libertine, he was, and so handsome! Wyverne saved me from ruin that day and brought me safely back to my mother. When we were back in London, though, Wyverne and I met often, and we never quite shook the topic of my ruination.” Her cheeks grew pink under their powder.

Caroline laughed along with the others, but a question pressed at her lips. She was grateful to Miss Meredith for asking it first. “The present duke isn’t much like his father, then?” Under her copper hair, Miss Meredith blushed.

“He’s the fair spit of his father in face and form.” Lady Applewood’s hands fluttered, fanning herself. “My, yes—both such handsome devils. But young Wyverne is much more serious-minded, not nearly the ladies’ man the old duke was.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Lady Kettleburn leaned in as though ready to impart a secret to the whole room. “Wasn’t he hunting himself a wife with your help, Caro?”

All eyes turned to Caroline. Her mouth dried under the sudden scrutiny, but she tossed off a careless laugh. “Yes, that’s right. But it’s hardly improper to search for a wife, is it?”

“Did he marry, then?” The baroness cocked her proud head.

“If he hasn’t yet, he will soon.” Caroline smiled with frozen lips. “An heiress to an industrial fortune who shares his interest in modern improvements. They’ll deal well together, I am sure.”

“He was growing you a special flower, wasn’t he?” Lady Halliwell clasped her plump hands together over her peach-clad bosom, her starry eyes wide.

“That didn’t work out, I’m sorry to say. It couldn’t survive in London.” An apt summation of their entire relationship.

But if Michael could not survive in London, she would. She hid a throb of anguish under a smile, offering a plate around. “More lemon tarts?” Pastry never failed to divert a conversation, and her guests swooped on the sweets.

Just as Caroline settled herself in her chair again, she heard the tread of approaching footsteps on the stairs.

“Expecting someone else, Caro?” Lady Applewood raised her eyebrows. “If that’s Lady Tallant, I shall have to scold her for being late. She shan’t get a lemon tart.”

Caroline’s brow furrowed. “It can’t be Lady Tallant. She’s not yet back in London.”

Darling Emily, to remain at Callows for the rest of the house party, serving as hostess for Michael’s guests. She had sent Caroline a letter to that effect during Caroline’s visit to her cousin Frances, though the letter had been irritatingly short on further details—just a simple “things are progressing as planned,” and a reassurance that Caroline need not worry herself.

And a request for the date of Caroline’s return to London.

Caroline had sent Emily the date and her thanks. And she
had
worried—but not enough to return to Lancashire.

No, she had been sent packing as surely as Stratton had, though at least she’d been permitted to set the time of her departure herself. When a man told one he was determined to sell himself in marriage, there was no more reason to stay with him, or to hope for anything to be different.

“That sounds like the tread of boots,” said Augusta Meredith. “A
man
would not intrude on our time together, would he?” Bless the girl, she looked eager.

Caroline realized in a flash who it must be.
Stratton
. Stratton, who would see a roomful of women to harass. Perhaps he meant to begin some rumor before a crowd.

There was no help for it; she would simply have to murder him.

“If you’ll pardon me,” she said to the room at large. She rose to her feet and sidled toward the fireplace, where she could easily lay her hand on the poker.

Not that she would
really
kill him. But if she waved a poker at him, he would surely retreat. And then she’d have to smooth things over with her roomful of startled guests.

She would need a lot more lemon tarts for that. Drat.

She waited for the door to open, her hand hovering in readiness over the poker.

Her butler, Pollitt, poked his narrow head into the room. Caroline deflated, sagging against the carved marble of the chimneypiece.

“My lady, a gentleman wishes an audience. I told him you were not at home to male callers, but he was most insistent.”

“Throw him out the window,” Caroline muttered. The ever-tactful butler pretended not to hear her. “Very well, Pollitt. Show him in. Between the lot of us, surely we can dispose of him.” She looked around the room with a we’re-all-in-this-together smile, bracing herself with her guests’ friendly expressions.

A swift drumbeat of boots up the stairs, and the door was flung open again.
Stratton
, she was ready to say.

But it was not Stratton. It was Michael.

And he looked furious.

Lady Applewood gave a transported sigh. Augusta Meredith blushed again. Caroline froze.

She was standing in the middle of a roomful of women, all set to tongue-lash Stratton, and in came Michael instead. Michael, whom she hadn’t seen for a month.

Michael, who looked… oh, so delicious. So dear and unexpected and familiar and sudden that she had to lock her knees so they wouldn’t wobble.

“Your Grace,” Caroline murmured. Somehow she felt her way back to her chair and sank into it.

She had forgotten nothing of him since she last saw him, yet she gulped in every detail of his appearance now. His hair was a bit longer, disheveled as though he had been running his fingers through it. His skin was more tanned, no doubt from hours outside. His clothing was scrupulously fashionable, though. A tailored coat stretching over those broad shoulders; white linens intensifying the olive of his tan, the green of his eyes, the darkness of his hair. He looked mysterious and stalwart, a wild creature trapped in superfine and starched linen.

He also looked as though he was ready to knock heads together.

He nodded curtly at her, at the roomful of women. “Ladies,” he said by way of greeting. “Lady Stratton, I need to speak with you.” He folded his hands behind his back and glared, as though waiting for the world to obey him.

“Please do so, then, Your Grace.” She smiled prettily. “I am at home to callers, as you see, and quite willing to entertain another.”

“Yes, I do see that.” The heel of one boot ground into the vine-patterned carpet. “Very well. I suppose this is of a rather public nature, at that.”

He pulled a creased paper from the tail pocket of his coat and handed it to Caroline.

She recognized it at once as a caricature from the latest issue of London’s favorite scandal sheet,
The
Wagging
Tongue.
A tawdry drawing depicted Michael, wild-haired and wild-eyed, clothing askew, prostrating himself at the feet of a young lady. She was waving a good-bye, holding the arm of a smug-faced man shaped suspiciously like a ninepin.

I
shall
be
Ruined
If
You
leave
Me
My
Dear
, said the prostrate caricature through a frothing mouth.

I
shall
Be
Ruined
if
I
Stay
with
you
Mad
Michael
, quoth the young woman.

The ninepin-shaped man had the cherubic face of Stratton, with an unmistakable leer.
This
Ruin
shall
be
the
Making
of
Me
, he spoke behind the cover of his hand.

“How vulgar.” Caroline handed the caricature back to Michael. “I am sorry for it, Your Grace. I had not realized you were still a target of the press.”

To her surprise, his mouth pressed into an expression of unwilling humor. “I will probably always be a target, but that is not why I show this to you. Rather, I ask you to note that your relative has eloped with the bride you chose for me.”

Every china cup in the room clinked into its saucer; then followed a sharp silence. Rather like their confrontation in the Callows drawing room—only this time, the humiliation was not Caroline’s, but Michael’s.

As always, she yearned to offer comfort. “Again, I am sorry. Defenestration is far too good for Stratton.”

She gestured around the room, to indicate to everyone that no, nothing scandalous was occurring, and they might as well all take part in this conversation. “A few minutes ago, Your Grace, we were discussing your interest in finding a wife. You must be disappointed by this… unexpected development.” That sounded more diplomatic than
Stratton’s contemptible act of betrayal
. “But I assure you of my continued friendship, as I am sure all these ladies do. I shall try to help undo the wrong done to you, and perhaps others will too.”

Caroline caught Lady Applewood’s eye, knowing the marchioness would nod eagerly. That lady’s fondness for the late duke would certainly lead her to assist his son.

And where a marchioness and countess led, the rest of the drawing room followed, just as Caroline had hoped. The whispers that followed seemed sympathetic rather than furtive; Michael had become the wronged party, to be pitied rather than censured.

But, contrary man, he had no use for pity. He held up a hand to silence the room, then pressed it to his temple. “That is not necessary.” He shut his eyes for a moment. “I have allowed others to choose for me long enough. Rather, my lady, I have called to inform you that I shall choose for myself from this point forward.”

Were it not for the high back of the chair in which she sat, Caroline rather thought she would have collapsed. So, he had come all this way to reject her help. To again prove to the world that he had no use for her.

Mindful of the room full of women taking in her every word, she said only, “Of course, Your Grace. That is to be expected. I wish you all the best.”

She held out her hand to shake his in farewell, wondering how quickly he would leave and how long before she might clear the drawing room of her other callers. The fewer witnesses to her unraveling self-possession, the better.

Lowering his hand from where it pressed at his temple, he took her fingers in his. Instead of releasing them after a correct second, he pressed them. “You are mistaken in your assumptions,” he murmured. In his eyes was a wicked gleam.

Caroline’s face went hot. “I… what? What do you assume that I assume?” How articulate.

“I have already made my own choice. Would you have me announce it now?”

She tugged her fingers free from his, then folded her hands primly in her lap. “You may do as you like, Your Grace.”

“Of course I may,” he muttered. “I’m a dratted duke. Did you not say so once?”

She managed a tight little smile. “I said a lot of things.”

His brows lifted. “You are certain about this? All right, then.”

With a deep breath, a settling of his feet on the carpet, he turned to the room at large. Behind his back, Caroline saw his fingers lace bloodlessly tight, though his voice was cool and steady. “Ladies, I intend to propose marriage to Lady Stratton.”

He turned to Caroline with an expression as bland as though he’d stated that the weather was to be found outside, or that Lancashire lay to the north of London.

Caroline froze. Again, he spoke the words she craved. And again, she could not fathom what motivated him to propose marriage. She wanted, in equal parts, to throw herself into his arms and to chuck a vase at his head.

She cracked through the icy chill and forced herself to stand. “Let us discuss the matter later, Your Grace.”

“Nonsense.” The bubbling voice of Lady Applewood rang out. “It’s past time we leave you to your conversation, Caro dear.” The marchioness rose to her full, miniscule height. “We have far outstayed our welcome, but only because we’ve had such a delightful time. Isn’t that so, my dears?”

She waited until the other women chorused their assent before adding, “Such a lovely afternoon. You
will
have us over again, won’t you, Caro? And I
must
get your receipt for lemon tarts. My cook can’t hold a candle to yours. Wyverne, it is a
pleasure
to see you.”

“Thank you, Lady Applewood,” Caroline fumbled. “I would be delighted to have you call again. I shall send out notes to you all.”

“You need have no doubt that I shall accept.” And with another wink, that cheerful lady made her way to the door.

Michael’s eyes widened as the marchioness passed behind him, and Caroline feared very much that Lady Applewood had patted him on the bum.

That delectable arse. Caroline had told him of its wonders.

One by one, the other women made their good-byes, with curious glances or knowing smiles. What they thought they knew, Caroline couldn’t imagine, but she met everyone’s farewell with a gracious reply; she parried every glance with a smile. She promised the receipt for lemon tarts to no fewer than four people, and when they all left, she was satisfied that they had been well enough amused to come again.

She’d made a beginning at making friends. She had a winking ally in Lady Applewood. And now she was alone with His Grace, the Duke of Incomprehensibility. Again, he pressed at his temple; his mouth made a dash between two parentheses of stern creases.

“You look quite melodramatic,” Caroline said. “Are you well?”

“You keep me in unbearable suspense, Caro.”

She sank into her chair again. “Do sit, Michael, and tell me what has brought you here. If your motivations are the same as previously—namely, that you wish for my money—my answer must be the same as well. Simply because Miss Cartwright has run off with Stratton does not mean I will consent to fill her role.”

She was rather impressed by her ability to construct a complete sentence over the pitiful heavings of thwarted hope.

“You wish to understand my motivations?” Michael creased the thin paper of the caricature with great deliberation, his face an unreadable composition of angles. He drew up a chair near Caroline and folded his long body into it. “They are the purest. But I must explain everything, or you won’t believe me.”

He sank back in his chair. His eyes closed, and Caroline could see purple shadows beneath them. He had been sleeping poorly again. So, everything was just as it had always been: his burden of responsibility, his impatience.

The way her heart pounded, wishing he would care for it.

His eyes opened to regard her. “The name,
Mad
Michael
.” He waved the folded caricature as gingerly as he would a dead mouse, then slipped it back into a pocket with as much distaste. “It’s why I came to London eleven years ago, and also why I left so quickly. You see, I wanted to prove my reputation wrong, but I ended by proving quite the opposite. Since my youth, I’ve been thought eccentric. I was sent home from school for tinkering and solitude, and at that time, I suppose, my father turned against me.”

A pause succeeded this speech, so long that Caroline finally said, “I am sorry to hear it. But is that all?”

Michael’s head snapped back. “Is that
all
? It was enough to blight years of my life.”

“I don’t mean to belittle the experience,” Caroline hurried to explain. “But from what I’ve heard of your father, he was flighty and dissipated. I should rather regard any criticism from him as a mark in your favor.”

Michael let out a startled laugh. “I had not regarded the situation in that light.”

“It’s how I choose to regard it.”

He slanted a look at her. “Thank you for that. I assume, then, you have heard a few rumors about my father.”

“More than a few. I know he had a taste for female company.”

“That and any other expensive amusement you can think of. Drinking, gambling, horses, mistresses, and… well. You understand. After my birth, my mother was quiet and sad, and she soon dwindled away. My father was then free to leave Lancashire—and me—behind, living a profligate life in London and the great cities of Europe, at least until war closed the Continent to him. He scarcely gave a thought to his dukedom beyond the rent deposits into his accounts, and when those began to decrease, he borrowed to make up the difference. His charm was always enough to convince the polite world that Wyverne was as sound as ever.”

“Ah.” Caroline knew full well the ability of a bloated charm to hide a lonely truth.

Michael’s voice turned hollow. “In temperament, I was as different from him as one could imagine. On those rare occasions he returned to Callows, he communicated his—let us call it disappointment. He could not understand why a future duke would waste time with books and tinkering when the world was full of feasts and drink and wenches.”

“Then he was a fool.” A vivid picture sprang into Caroline’s imagination: a dark-haired boy bent over a magic lantern; a brash and bitter man with grass-green eyes fuming behind him.

Michael gripped the arms of his chair tightly. “Maybe I should defend his memory, but I cannot. He returned to Lancashire permanently, to live in the dukedom to which he had laid waste, only when he developed the French disease.”

Syphilis
. Caroline shivered despite her long sleeves. “How dreadful.” She had heard horrid tales of that disease, eating away its victims from the inside out, driving them to physical and mental ruin.

“It was, rather,” Michael said with a touch of black humor. “In his decline, I believe my father went mad himself. He admitted none of his own wrongs, instead raving about the numerous ways in which I had disgraced him.”

A muscle twitched in his jaw. “I tried to be a good son—a good man—to prove I would make a good duke. And so I traveled to London, but once I arrived, I knew not what to do. There was nothing I could build. No one I could help. I hated being the object of any curiosity, certain as I was that I was being judged by society and found wanting.”

His shoulders hunched; then he forced them square. “In the City, I made myself circulate in polite society, though dreadful headaches began to plague me. Still, I walked the narrow edge of propriety; I never took refuge in the laudanum or fleshpots to which my father became enslaved. But when I met you, I forgot my careful vows. You were so different from anyone I had met. Full of delight, kind and friendly, beautiful inside and out. You were… irresistible.”

Her hand drifted up to touch her lips; the memory of their stolen long-ago kisses seemed to press hot on her mouth. “I found you irresistible too.”

Irresistible enough to follow him about from ball to ball, to drift onto the terrace at Lady Applewood’s house and surrender her dignity into his strong hands. Heedless of her reputation, of anything but her fascination with that harsh, beautiful man. “Yet how irresistible could you truly have found me, Michael? We were caught in an embrace, yet you left. For eleven years, I heard nothing from you.”