Steeplechase Page 14

  “Oh, thank you!”

  Hell’s hounds! But with candlelight reflecting off the tears of gratitude swimming in his wife’s eyes and illuminating the entire petite and delectable vision perched not a foot from his chest, his wife was quite the most appealing sight he’d seen in years. If ever. He should offer to escort her back to her bedchamber, but he dared not get out of bed. Not only was he naked, but his arousal would be so apparent even his innocent Sal could not miss it.

  Devil a bit, but this was not at all the way he’d planned it. They must return to the terms of their agreement. Immediately!

  “Now off with you,” Harlan barked, more abruptly than he had intended. “Sleep peacefully. I will take care of everything in the morning.”

  His wife swooped in and kissed him, nothing more than a brief brush against his cheek, but she smelled of flowers and of . . . Sarah, fresh and virginal. As she picked up the candle and headed purposefully toward the staircase, Harlan plunged his head into his hands, stifling a groan. No problem arriving at the bastard’s studio at the appointed hour of eleven. He had already had all the sleep he was going to get that night.

  “Good morning.” Harlan experienced a grim surge of satisfaction at the expression on Edmund Wendell’s face when he opened his studio door, expecting Lady Davenham and her maid and discovering Viscount Davenham instead. “I have come to inspect my wife’s portrait,” he announced in his most arrogant noble accents. “Naturally, Marchmont wishes my approval before he settles your fee.”

  The artist, whose face had turned the shade of a blank canvas, returned the greeting of his illustrious visitor, adding in remarkably obsequious tones, “Of course. This way, my lord.”

  Miserable toad-eater. Bully a child, but fawn over a title, would he?

  Harlan studied Sarah’s portrait—the white gown, the garden, her lovely face and shining hair. She was right—the nasty rat had talent. And yet Wendell had made his little Sally no more beautiful than she actually was. His parents would be exceedingly pleased. No sense in spoiling their gift by revealing any more than was absolutely necessary. But as for Wendell . . .

  “And now,” Lord Davenham said, “you will show me the second portrait.”

  “It is no more than a sketch, my lord,” the artist protested, “not worthy of your inspect—”

  “Now!”

  “Yes, my lord.” Wendell led him toward the large canvas set upon an easel, facing an opulent divan that, in itself, gave the appearance of decadence. Harlan, already coldly furious, felt his control slip even before he turned his gaze to the portrait.

  He had told himself he would handle this matter in the style expected of a gentleman, but it was rapidly becoming obvious why duels were still so popular in spite of being banned. Not that he could go out with a cur like Wendell, but nonetheless . . . Amazing what could be portrayed in simple charcoal. The divan, the outline of a reclining body, long unbound hair, the decided swell of full bosoms . . . Harlan’s gaze stuck on the place where scarf met bodice, the place where this sorry excuse for a man had dared place his all-too-nimble fingers.

  That morning, even as he had selected a dagger from his collection, he had told himself it was only a sensible precaution. Now Harlan knew why he had brought it. He drew it out slowly from beneath his jacket, savoring Wendell’s gasp of genuine horror. “I selected my favorite,” he told the artist quite conversationally. “It seemed only fitting for the task at hand.” The viscount withdrew the dagger from its gem-studded sheath and held it out to Edmund Wendell. “You may have the honor of making certain this portrait does not survive. Nor, I might add, is it ever to be duplicated. If I should hear of any attempt to do so, the next time I see you, it will not be canvas that tastes my blade. Do I make myself clear?”

  Wendell stepped back, hands behind him. “No, no, you cannot ask this of me!”

  “You do not understand my words?” Harlan inquired smoothly.

  Edmund Wendell closed his eyes, swallowed, his handsome face gone sour with fear. “I understand quite well, my lord, but this was to be my masterpiece—”

  “What it will be is the death of you,” Harlan told him. He thrust the dagger into the artist’s limp hand. “Now do it!”

  When Sarah’s second portrait was nothing but shreds of canvas littering the studio floor, Lord Davenham nodded his satisfaction, reminded Mr. Wendell that it was never to be duplicated, and took his leave. With his hand on the door knob, the viscount paused and looked back at the stunned artist. “There are a great many fish in the sea, Wendell. Just be certain that my Sarah is never again among them. Stick to bored matrons who are eager for a roll in the hay. Good day.”

  Lord and Lady Davenham went to the opera that night, sharing a box with Miss Twitchell and Lord Richard, a pairing neither Harlan or Sarah found credible, but which proved to be surprisingly congenial. Esmerelda Twitchell was lively, as well as good-natured and well-mannered, and although Lord Richard was so épris he spent most of his time watching his companion instead of the drama on stage, he was too much the polished gentleman not to uphold his end of the conversation. The result was that the Davenhams passed an entire evening in each other’s company without my lord feeling the least bit bored or constrained by dancing attendance on his wife. Even though he had, in fact, devoted all his time that day—save for a mid-afternoon nap—in her service. As he had always suspected, wives were a devil of a nuisance, but he had to admit his sense of satisfaction outweighed his annoyance tenfold. Being of service to his little Sarah made him feel like a giant, a knight of old riding full tilt to the rescue.

  It felt good.

  On stage, the tenor sang passionately of his love for his mistress, forcibly reminding Harlan that his wife’s peccadillos, no matter how innocent her involvement, were a threat to his preferred way of life. Feeling a brief sense of accomplishment could not compensate for the loss of his life as a young man about town. He must return to it and take Dickon with him. When he was thirty and Sal was of age—that was time enough to accept a leg-shackle. But not now, not yet.

  She smelled good, though, bringing back thoughts of last night—her kiss, his throbbing arousal. Harlan shifted in his red velvet chair, jammed his program over his lap. He glared at the ballerinas who had replaced the soulful tenor, quite forgetting the number of times he had scanned each and every face and limb through his quizzing glass, wondering which one might be his selection for the evening.

  In spite of the viscount’s discomfort, the evening might have ended on a figurative, as well as actual, high note, if their box had not had a visitor during the second interval. Southwaite, by God! Just when Harlan was congratulating himself on solving his wife’s problem and was once again well on his way to restoring her to invisibility, Geoffrey Hatton had to poke his patrician nose through the velvet curtains of their box. Dickon, no more pleased than he was, was suddenly hovering over Miss Twitchell as if Southwaite might attempt to fly away with her.

  No doubt about it. Women were a great deal of trouble. If only ladies of quality could be kept to the bedchamber, as one did with a mistress, what a great many problems would be solved.

  Lord Davenham’s eyes followed those of Lord Southwaite, who was standing, to the row of brilliants decorating the square neckline of Sarah’s lilac silk gown. The very low neckline, which though fashionable, exposed far too much of his innocent young wife. Hell and the devil confound it, was he never to have any peace?

  Southwaite raised his eyes and smiled. A deliberate taunt, by God! No doubt he’d had a good look all the way down to Sarah’s stays, blast him for the rake he was!

  The baron was asking Sarah to drive with him in the park.

  She was accepting.

  Harlan had to restrain himself from causing a scene. It was perfectly normal to be possessive, he assured himself as he gripped the gilded back of his chair so hard it nearly snapped. Sarah was his, if only on paper. If any man was to have her, it was going to be he!

  Some day. When she w
as ready. When little Sal was old enough.

  When he was old enough, whispered the still small voice of his conscience.

  Aunt Portia, I shall never forgive you.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Remarkable, my dear,” the Wicked Baron drawled, examining Lady Davenham from the jet black ostrich plumes in her hair to her shiny black patent slippers with toes and heels of filigreed silver. From her silver net shawl that served only to direct attention to the depth of her plunging décolletage to the narrow black velvet ribbons that fell from just below the bodice of her soft black silk gown to her calves, each one ending in a tiny tinkling silver bell. To add to the effect, a cluster of three silver bells depended from the black velvet bandeau that circled my lady’s gold-streaked strawberry hair. “I take it you ordered this ensemble with just this occasion in mind?” Geoffrey added, not quite managing to keep a twinkle out of eyes that usually reflected only ennui.

  “It is as far from a young miss as I could get,” Sarah told him roundly.

  “It is indeed,” the baron agreed, most solemnly. “Though I trust the color is not prophetic.”

  “My lord?” Wide-eyed, Sarah stared up at him. They were standing in the entry hall of the house on Margaret Street, where Lord Southwaite has just arrived to escort Lady Davenham for the evening.

  Geoffrey offered his arm and swept her out of earshot of the butler and the footman before replying. “Gaming hells have a tendency to deplete one’s resources, my dear. Night after night, men—and women—lose their heads, their fortunes, their lands, and their lives in the hells of London. It is a disease—”

  “Oh, no,” Sarah protested as the baron helped her into his carriage, “I do not wish to place a bet, I assure you. After putting Davenham to so much trouble over my portrait, I cannot imagine aggravating him further, particularly with something so nasty as gambling debts. I merely wish to see what a gaming hell is like.”

  “My dear girl, you cannot go to one of the London’s best-known hells and not place a bet!”

  “I have no idea how to play,” Sarah responded loftily. “Gaming is a gentleman’s sport.”

  Lord Southwaite’s laughter filled the carriage, drowning the sound of the wheels bounding over rough cobbles. “Ah, Sarah, Sarah. You are so young. “Only a few short years ago many of the gaming houses were kept by women—a good number of them with titles to their names. And many punters were female as well, with their fair share of tragedy and misfortune. Young Miss Braddock, daughter of the general, hanged herself with her sash, and one titled matron of the ton is said to have lost as much as half a million pounds.”

  “Never say so!” Sarah gasped.

  “Calm yourself, my dear. I see nothing in your character to suggest you might succumb to the gaming disease, but you must venture something, you know. Otherwise this excursion will be wasted. Which reminds me, how did Miss Twitchell take her exclusion from this evening’s activities?”

  “She was most understanding,” Sarah replied primly, “although she scolded me quite fiercely for going through with tonight’s scheme. I suppose”—the young viscountess considered the matter—“I daresay Esmerelda must be more careful of her reputation than . . .” Sarah broke off, realizing that once again her tongue was running away with her.

  “Than the daughter of a marquess?”

  “Indeed,” she murmured.

  “Do you play whist, piquet, or possibly casino?” Southwaite inquired, returning to his original topic.

  “Truthfully, I do not care for card games,” Sarah sighed, “though one cannot avoid learning the basics.”

  “My dear girl.” Geoffrey patted her hand. “I fear you may have to be more naughty than I had planned, for hazard, E. O., and faro are quite illegal, and if you do not play cards, there is little else to do.”

  “I can watch,” Sarah declared.

  Lord Southwaite’s fingers tightened their grip on the tall black hat balanced on his lap. “Sarah—listen carefully. You will recall I offered to help you attract Davenham’s attention. If you go to a gaming hell and merely watch, he may not hear of it for days. Certainly, he will have no reason to have it brought home to him that he must keep a closer eye on you.”

  “Oh,” Sarah murmured, chagrined she had not thought out this matter for herself. “I have only my pin money, you know, and that is at home in my dresser drawer.”

  “I shall be delighted to be your banker, my dear. It will be well worth it. I anticipate quite the most fascinating evening I have spent at the tables in some time.”

  “You are much too generous, my lord,” Sarah demurred. “Harlan will be furious.”

  “Is that not precisely why we are on our way to Number Forty, Pall Mall?”

  Sarah plunged her face into her hands, the two black ostrich plumes waving, the silver bells tinkling over one ear. “My lo—Geoffrey . . . I cannot! What if I should lose a vast sum of money? I should never forgive myself.”

  “You cannot lose what you do not wager, Sarah, and I shall be there to make sure you do not plunge too deep.”

  Sarah sat up, took a deep breath. “I do believe it is true. You are a very bad man.”

  “And if you truly thought that, you would not be riding à deux with me in a closed carriage through the dark streets of London on your way to a gaming hell.”

  For a full block there was no sound but the rumble of the wheels and an occasional burst of laughter from those on the street outside. “When we were in Brighton,” Sarah said at last, “there was no way I could have anticipated anything so bizarre as a deer attempting to escape a hunting party by swimming for France. Yet I could not help but notice that it focused Davenham’s attention on me as nothing had before. He was actually . . . tender. And then we quarreled over Esmerelda, we returned early to London, and he . . . he simply vanished. Not that we had not agreed . . . I expect,” Sarah said more slowly, her voice little above a whisper, “you realize ours is a marriage of convenience, but somehow—oh, botheration!—somehow I had expected more. Quite foolish of me, I know.”

  “And you have thoroughly enjoyed flaunting Miss Twitchell in his noble face and flirting with a rake old enough to be your father.”

  “You are my friend, Geoffrey. I never think of you as a rake,” Sarah responded with more than a touch of self-righteousness. “And Esmerelda is a darling. Richard will be fortunate if she will have him.”

  “You are so small,” Southwaite mused. “So young and innocent, it is easy to miss the wheels spinning so swiftly in that head of yours. Come now, word of honor, my dear. Assure me you upset that milk in Hyde Park purely by accident.”

  “You wish me to admit to being an abominable whip?”

  “Are you?”

  “Not at all,” Lady Davenham declared loftily. “But I might have been a trifle careless that morning, and I never intended to frighten that poor cow, truly I did not.”

  Geoffrey was silent for a moment as he struggled to contain a laugh. What a delightful little baggage was Lady Sarah Davenham. “And Wendell?” he managed at last.

  “I did not encourage him, not one little bit!” Sarah shot back. “At least I think I did not. No, truly, he is a naughty man who does not need any encouragement at all. That incident was not my fault. But Davenham was perfectly splendid, was he not? He tells me I need have no fear of Wendell ever displaying the second portrait.”

  Southwaite would like to have been a fly on the wall at that confrontation, for not by so much as a word or a glance had the tale of Davenham’s visit to Edmund Wendell’s studio joined the gossip mart. Viscount and artist were equally silent on the subject.

  “And yet you have continued to support Miss Twitchell and have thrown your friendship with me in Davenham’s face at every turn. And now you are deliberately setting out to do something designed to send him into an apoplexy.”

  “It was your idea, was it not?”

  “I am reconsidering my promise not to kill him.”

  “Geoffrey!”


  “Rest easy, my dear. I assure you if it comes to pistols at dawn, your husband is much more likely to kill me. Ah, how fortunate—I believe we have arrived. The topic of duels is one I do not wish to pursue.”

  Lady Davenham was disappointed. A gaming hell should be, well, a hell. With dark cavernous rooms done up in scarlet and black, with the tart odor of fire and brimstone wafting about. Instead, they were greeted at the door by an elegant majordomo and quickly welcomed into the establishment, but not before Sarah had the satisfaction of noting the presence of a towering bruiser garbed in black, whose arms threatened to burst the seams of his jacket and whose thighs appeared to be molded from a barrel of ale. But the rooms into which they had been ushered were positively tame—done up in the French fashion, light and airy. The smells were those of fine food prepared by an excellent chef, of hot wax from hundreds of candles, of . . . of something more than the press of hot bodies Sarah had become accustomed to from her many evenings of ton parties.

  Perhaps . . . yes, perhaps this place was not so tame, after all. It was possible that what she sensed was excitement, tension . . . fear. Even in the first salon they entered, where men and women were quietly playing cards, she could feel an atmosphere that sizzled with intense concentration. White knuckles showed here and there as men clutched cards to their chests. In the far corner a lady slipped a ring from her finger and dropped it onto the center of the whist table. Oh, my!

  “Come,” Geoffrey said, “since you do not care for cards, my dear, let us explore.” He accepted two flutes of champagne from a waiter, handed one to Sarah, and they set off, wandering from one well-appointed room to the next.

  Another card room was next, set up for the exclusive use of those indulging in the two-handed game of piquet. A supper room with such an attractive array of food that Lord Southwaite was forced to drag his young protégée from the room. And then they found themselves confronted by a stalwart guard, not much smaller than the giant at the front entrance, standing before a closed door at the end of the corridor. He bowed, murmured, “My lord,” and opened the door with a flourish. For Geoffrey Hatton, Lord Southwaite, no doors were barred.