Czytaj książkę: «Days Of Rakes And Roses»

Chapter 1

Rothermere House, London

April 1826

The ball to celebrate a woman’s forthcoming wedding should be one of the happiest events in her life.

Suppressing a sigh, Lady Lydia Rothermere surveyed the throng crowded into her brother Cam’s white and gilt ballroom and told herself that of course she was happy. This mightn’t be the night she’d dreamed about as a foolish adolescent, but she’d long ago relinquished her dreams. She was a mature, sensible woman of twenty-seven marrying a mature, sensible man of forty-one. She was content with her decision. For a woman well past her debut, contentment was something with which she should be, well, content.

The bracing lecture didn’t notably raise her spirits. She muffled another sigh and plastered a smile on her face. This party was in her honor and she intended to enjoy it, even if it killed her. She wore a new dress to mark the occasion, dark blue brocade with Brussels lace, and her maid had twined red and white rosebuds through her thick auburn hair.

“I’m neglecting you, my dear.” Sir Grenville Berwick turned from the political cronies who had occupied his attention for the last half hour and took possession of her white-gloved hand.

Her fiancé’s touch aroused no frisson of anticipation. But then only one man had ever made Lydia tremble with desire, and that had been so long ago, she now viewed the events of that summer day as an aberration in an otherwise blameless life. She didn’t pretend to love the man she’d promised to marry, but she respected him. And God willing, she’d have children, lots of children, to whom she would devote the vast well of frustrated love in her heart.

Please let it be so.

As she turned to Grenville, she kept the smile on her lips, even though it felt like a rictus grin. Tonight he looked the perfect parliamentarian in his sober, dark coat, with his graying brown hair combed back from his high forehead. “I’m not some giddy young thing. You don’t have to fuss over me.”

Sir Grenville’s square-jawed face didn’t lighten and his brown eyes remained grave. “You deserve to be fussed over, Lydia. I still find myself astounded that you consented to be my bride.”

“You’re too good for me.”

She meant it. If Grenville knew how once she’d verged on surrendering her virtue to a scoundrel, he wouldn’t place her on a pedestal. Since that calamitous day at Fentonwyck, her behavior had been exemplary, unless it was a sin to lie awake reliving the only passion she’d ever tasted. To lie awake regretting, wicked creature she was, that her father had erupted into the hay barn before Simon had ventured beyond kisses.

“Your modesty does you credit.” Grenville surveyed the gathering with a satisfied air. “The world wishes us well. It’s quite a turnout.”

Hundreds had gathered to celebrate. Sir Grenville was a rising political star and Lydia was much admired for her charity work. She’d even caught sight of the brooding and scarred Jonas Merrick in one of the card rooms. Her brother who hosted the ball was an acknowledged leader of society. This was despite questions shadowing Cam’s legitimacy. It was common knowledge that his mother had shared her favors with her husband and his younger brother. The identity of Lydia’s sire was never in doubt—the late duke’s dashing, rakehell brother had died well before her arrival—but both Rothermere children had grown up weathering scandal.

From habit, Lydia sought Cam in the crowd. Her brother was so tall, she easily spotted his glossy dark head over the heaving sea of people. Beside him stood the ever elegant Sir Richard Harmsworth, her brother’s closest friend and as golden fair as Cam was dark.

Distantly, she was grateful that so many people offered their congratulations. Since consenting to Grenville’s proposal a year ago, she’d felt as if a thick wall of glass separated her from the world. She supposed the sense of disconnection would pass. Eventually.

The passionate hoyden who still lurked in Lydia’s heart insisted that she was more than this staid, benevolent cipher. Except that after ten barren years of acting as the sedate woman the world considered her, the bleak suspicion lurked that she had in truth become this dull creature. At least the dull creature was safe and respected and armored against the anguish of strong emotion.

If she hadn’t entirely conquered her longing for something … other, she would do so by the time she walked up the aisle of St. George’s in Hanover Square in two weeks’ time. This marriage to Grenville was right for her, promising a calm haven and a useful future. She’d spent her life holding her head high against spiteful whispers, the cruel assumption that, like mother, like daughter, bad blood would eventually tell. It was only a matter of time before her true nature would surface. Only once had Lydia kicked over the traces. And hadn’t that been a complete disaster?

“Shall we dance?” Grenville asked. The musicians had just struck up a waltz, the scratch of the violins barely audible above the chatter.

Grenville danced well, if without particular flair. But then, Simon’s desertion had taught Lydia to mistrust flair. What she needed was steadiness and kindness and a devotion to shared ideals. Grenville offered her all of that. She ignored a jeer from her inner woman as she circled the ballroom, her heart beating as steadily as if she sat alone at her embroidery.

From long habit, she made sure that her troubled thoughts didn’t show on her face. For so many years, she’d presented an appearance of unruffled calm that it was second nature to her now. Perhaps after another ten years, the appearance would be truth, not pretence.

“I apologize for bringing House business to our party, my love.”

“No need,” she said calmly. She didn’t mind that Grenville had devoted the weeks before their wedding to political maneuvering, although something rebellious inside her carped that she should mind.

Not really listening to his travails with the current bill, she made encouraging noises. With unwelcome grimness, it struck her that this would form the pattern of conversation for the rest of her life. She would be a witch to cavil at what fate arranged. She went into this marriage with her eyes wide open. If Grenville’s company lacked something in excitement, excitement was overrated.

Or at the very least, it was dangerous. And she’d decided at seventeen that she’d never do anything dangerous again. Her blood still ran cold when she remembered her father’s contemptuous tone as he’d called her a brainless slut like her mother.

As if the memory alerted long buried instincts, Lydia glanced over Grenville’s shoulder to the staircase sweeping down into the ballroom. A tall man in immaculate black tailoring paused on the landing and surveyed the room. A cynical smile curved familiar lips. Light from the chandeliers slanted across gilded hair. He stood loose-limbed and relaxed, as if the entire world offered him welcome.

“Lydia, are you well? Lydia?”

Grenville’s worried voice pierced her blind distress. She realized that she’d stopped dead in the middle of the dance. She hadn’t blushed for years, but uncomfortable heat flooded into her cheeks now.

Dear God, let her misstep go unremarked. And what had caused it. She glanced around nervously, the old horror of scandal gripping her. Nobody seemed to have noticed her stumble.

She made herself move again, but her feet felt like bricks and she staggered against her partner. Grenville’s hand tightened around her waist. “My dear, are you feeling faint? The room is close and the night is warm. You’ve been working such long hours, getting that new soup kitchen running. Should I take you onto the terrace?”

“Yes … yes, please take me outside.” She hardly recognized the stammering reply as her own. To remain upright, she curled her hand over Grenville’s shoulder. Her heart raced so fast, she felt light-headed, as though the ground shifted beneath her.

She was addled to think that the man on the staircase was Simon. Not after all this time. Not now when she had finally come so close to severing the chains of her past.

For years she’d pined after him. Then when he didn’t contact her after her father’s death, she’d finally understood that Simon had no intention of returning for her. Stupid girl. Five years before that without so much as a note should have indicated his indifference.

Even after acknowledging at last that Simon cared nothing for her, no man could compete with the ghost of her first amour. Until she’d met Grenville and realized that life could offer rewards separate from Simon’s unattainable love. Independence. A family. A life dedicated to service.

Deliberately she didn’t look toward the staircase again. She had to be mistaken. The illusion resulted from wedding nerves and the fact that so close to her nuptials, memories of her long-lost love would inevitably resurface. Simon had left England immediately after the incident in the barn. She’d only rarely heard about his doings—Simon Metcalf’s exploits were considered too outré for the ears of an unmarried girl, even one past first youth. He’d fallen in with a rakish crowd on the Continent; raffish women, louche aristocrats, penniless adventurers. If polite society mentioned Simon Metcalf, it was in censorious terms. The last report Lydia had had of Simon was from somewhere in the remote reaches of the Ottoman Empire.

Still the merest idea that he could be back in London made her heart flutter like a bird longing to break out of its cage. Would she never be free of him?

With his usual aplomb, Grenville steered her through the crowd to where the French doors opened to the fine night. With the unseasonal warmth, many guests had resorted to the garden. Lydia and Grenville’s progress toward the terrace aroused no curiosity, thank goodness.

Lydia soon returned enough to herself to deride her loss of control. Even in the unlikely event that the man was Simon, she hadn’t seen the reprobate for ten years. She was no longer a dewy-eyed adolescent panting for his attentions. She was renowned for her poise and her ability to quell unrest in a bread line with a single word.

They didn’t make it to the terrace. Her brother strode toward her. To anyone who didn’t know Cam well, he appeared his usual cool self. The Rothermeres specialized in looking untouched, even when scandals threatened to blow their world apart. But as he caught her arm, she saw a spark of what could be guilt in his green eyes. “Lydia, I’ve got a surprise for you. An old friend is here to wish you well.”

Every muscle in her body stiffened into horrified immobility, although for all her self-serving denial, she’d known from the first that the man was Simon. What on earth was Cam doing bringing him to her betrothal ball? She suddenly remembered that her brother had always defended his friend to their father, even after Lydia’s indiscretion. But Cam must know that tonight, Simon Metcalf was the last man she wanted to see.

Simon stood at Cam’s shoulder and the comprehensive glance he swept over Lydia heated her blush to fire. The noisy room, loud with talk and music, faded into an echoing void. The sight of Simon jammed Lydia’s throat with painful silence. She couldn’t help remembering that the last time they were together, she’d been half out of her dress.

As if from a long way away, Cam continued. “Sir Grenville, allow me to present an old family connection, Simon Metcalf. We grew up together. Simon, this is Lydia’s intended, Sir Grenville Berwick.”

The courtesies the men exchanged were meaningless gabble in Lydia’s ears. All she heard was her heart’s pounding. She couldn’t tear her gaze from Simon.

Devil take him, he was even more breathtakingly attractive than she remembered. All this time she’d told herself she’d idealized his looks. It turned out she’d hardly done him justice. Tall. Lean. Tanned from exposure to foreign suns, his once flaxen hair now a rich bronze.

He arched a mocking eyebrow at her. His long, thin mouth curled with a sardonic amusement alien to the pretty youth with whom she’d been so head over heels in love.

She stiffened with resentment. After all this time, he had no right to inspect her as if she were a sugarplum ready for devouring. Dear heaven, no man had surveyed the Duke of Sedgemoor’s strait-laced sister with such blatant sexual interest since …

Since Simon himself had forsaken her for the excitements of his European wanderings, God rot him. Still, her skin tingled with a sensual response unacceptable in a woman due to marry another man in a fortnight.

Anger came to her rescue and allowed her to sound composed as she curtsied and extended her hand. “Mr. Metcalf. I’d hardly have known you.”

If he was half as perceptive as his younger self, he’d surely guess that she lied, although he bowed with a surprising smoothness of address. Young Simon had been charming, but even after Oxford, scarcely practised in social niceties. Through their gloves, his touch seared.

“Lady Lydia,” he said neutrally.

How irritating. How lowering. This encounter with the girl he’d once pursued apparently left Simon completely unaffected. Lydia heartily wished she could say the same, but she’d be boiled in oil before she betrayed how her blood pulsed with exhilaration. An exhilaration she hadn’t felt since he’d kissed her in her father’s barn.

He held her hand a fraction longer than decorum permitted. She was proud of how she drew free without snatching away as instinct urged. She was desperate to counter his assurance with coolness of her own. Her pride would countenance nothing less. “I’m delighted that you’ve returned to England in time for my bridal ball.”

Ah, not quite so superior now. His dark blue eyes flashed in response to the veiled barb in her comment. “How could I stay away after reading Cam’s letter telling me you were engaged?”

“Easily, I imagine,” she snapped, then glanced swiftly at her fiancé. But Grenville was focused on haranguing Cam about some political matter, leaving her isolated with Simon in strangely public intimacy. Grenville clearly felt her reunion with a childhood friend sanctioned by her illustrious brother merited no special attention.

Grenville had no reason to doubt her constancy. Her steady temperament was famous. It had been one of the qualities he’d extolled in his proposal. Even at the time, that had pricked at her vanity. Steadiness of temperament made her sound like a well-bred horse, not a woman capable of tormenting a man with desire.

But, of course, she’d never been that woman, had she? The one occasion when she’d believed a man’s heart beat faster for her, he’d disappeared from her life.

“You haven’t changed a bit,” Simon said without emphasis.

She didn’t take that as a compliment, given how silly she’d once been over him. Her eyes narrowed. “Oh, yes, I have.”

She studied his face, seeking clues to his intentions. Just how had Cam lured Simon home from his exotic pleasures? Her brother must have been persuasive. As far as she knew, Simon hadn’t communicated with their family since the late duke had threatened him with ruin.

Now she thought about it, Cam’s purpose in making mischief was transparent enough. He considered Sir Grenville Berwick a self-righteous prig and he’d frequently verged on quarreling with her over her choice of husband. Winkling Simon away from the fleshpots must be a last-ditch attempt to make her cry off her engagement. Surely her brother knew her better. She loathed the thought of setting tongues wagging, as she certainly would if she jilted a good man in favor of a rapscallion whose name was a byword for license.