A Rogue's Downfall, page 14
“Now, that is a bouncer, sir,” she said, allowing him to return her hand to his lips for a second kiss. “Everyone knows that you have come here to court Nancy Peabody. She is a remarkably pretty girl, it must be admitted.”
“Girl,” he said. “Ah, yes, girl, ma’am. You are in the right of it there. A pretty girl can please the eye. It takes a beautiful woman to stir all the senses. A mature woman of your years. A woman who has passed the age of twenty.”
It appeared to the young lady in the tree that Mrs. Delaney had passed her twentieth birthday long since, but it was a clever way of paying a compliment, she supposed.
“Sir,” Mrs. Delaney asked, “are you flirting with me?”
The girl in the tree held her nose again.
“Flirting, ma’am?” His voice was like a velvet caress. “I do protest. Flirters have no serious intentions. Mine could not be more serious.”
“Indeed?” The lady’s voice too had become hushed and throaty. “Do you intend to tumble me on the ground, sir, when I am wearing my favorite muslin?”
The watcher stopped holding her nose. She felt sudden alarm.
“Ah, no,” he said. “Such charms should be tasted and feasted upon in the privacy of a locked room, ma’am. And worshiped. They should be worshiped on a soft bed.”
The lady withdrew her hand from his and tapped him lightly on the arm with it. “I have heard it said that you have some skill in—worshiping,” she said. “Perhaps it would be amusing to discover the truth of the matter for myself.”
“I am, ma’am,” he said, making her an elegant bow, “your humble slave. When? I pray you will not tease me by keeping me waiting.”
“It would please me excessively to tease you,” Mrs. Delaney said with her trilling laugh, “but I really do not believe I could bear to tease myself, sir. The door of my bedchamber will be unlocked tonight if the fact is of any interest to you.”
“I shall burn with unrequited passion and adoration until then,” he said, and he bent his dark head and set his lips to the lady’s for a brief moment.
“It promises well,” she said. “Alas that only half the afternoon has passed. But we should return to the house for tea, sir. Separately, I do believe. I would not have it said that I dally with handsome strangers in the absence of my husband.” She laughed merrily.
He bowed to her. “Far be it from me to sully the brightness of your reputation, ma’am,” he said. “I shall remain here for a while and discover whether the beauties of nature will be more apparent in the absence of your greater loveliness.”
“How absurd you are,” she said, turning from him to walk back to the house in virtuous solitude. “And what a flattering tongue you have been blessed with.” The young lady who had been an unwilling witness to this tender love scene was partly amused and partly shocked—and wondered how long the gentleman intended staying at the lily pond admiring the beauties of nature. He sat down on the grassy bank and draped his arms over his raised knees.
Mr. Bancroft probably needed the rest and the solitude as much as she did. He was a busy gentleman. She had been passing his room quite early this morning, bringing Mrs. Peabody a second cup of chocolate, which by rights her maid should have been doing, when the door had opened and Flossie, one of the chambermaids, had stepped out looking rosy and bright-eyed and slightly disheveled. Behind her as she closed the door there had been the merest glimpse of Mr. Bancroft in his shirtsleeves. It had not taken a great deal of imagination to guess that at the very least the two of them had been exchanging kisses.
At the very least!
And now he had made an assignation to spend the night, or at least a part of it, in Mrs. Delaney’s bed, tasting and feasting and worshiping. It was really quite scandalous. When Nancy confided to anyone who was prepared to listen, evident pride in her voice, that her intended husband was a rake, she was making no empty boast.
And then an insect landed on the young lady’s bare arm, and she slapped at it without thinking. The slap sounded rather like the cracking of a pistol to her own ears. She held her breath and directed her eyes downward without moving her head.
He had obviously heard it. He turned his head first to one side and then to the other before shrugging slightly and resuming his contemplation of the lily pond.
It amused him to break hearts. Oh, no, that was not strictly true. He supposed it might be mildly distressing to cause real suffering, real from-the-heart suffering. He always instinctively avoided any entanglement in which it seemed likely that the lady’s heart might be seriously engaged.
It would be more accurate to say, perhaps, that it amused him to deflate expectations. Many of his acquaintances avoided eligible females as they would avoid the plague, terrified that they would somehow be caught in parson’s mousetrap no matter how warily they stepped. Not he. He liked to live dangerously. He liked to see how close he could come to a declaration without ever actually making it or feeling that honor compelled him to do so.
He enjoyed watching young ladies and their mamas setting about entrapping him, believing that their subtleties went quite undetected by him. He liked watching them tread carefully at first and then become quite visibly triumphant as they preened themselves before less fortunate mortals. He was never quite sure what the full attraction of his person was, since he always pleaded poverty into those ears whose accompanying mouths were most sure to spread the word. A baron’s title was not exactly equivalent to a dukedom, after all, especially when it was a mere future expectation. His uncle was not yet sixty and was the epitome of health and heartiness. And one could never be quite certain that his uncle would not suddenly take it into his head to marry again and start producing sons annually.
But he knew that he was considered a catch. Perhaps his reputation and his elusiveness was the attraction. Just as men felt compelled to pursue women with reputations for unassailable virtue, even if they were not wondrously beautiful, he supposed that women might feel a similar challenge when presented with a rake.
And so after paying casual court to the rather pretty and definitely wealthy Miss Nancy Peabody for much of the Season, he had accepted the invitation to spend a few weeks at Holly House, even though his friends had made great sport of both the invitation and his decision to accept it, pulling gargoyle faces and making slashing gestures across their throats and pronouncing him a sure goner. They all clamored loudly and with marvelous wit for invitations to his wedding, and one of them volunteered to be godfather to his first child nine months after that event.
The pretty and wealthy and conceited Miss Peabody amused him, as did her gracious and pompous mama and her silent father, who appeared to be a nonentity in the Peabody household.
This visit, after all, afforded him a few weeks of relaxation in the country with congenial company and prospects enough with which to satisfy his sexual appetites. He might have made do with the buxom and eager maid who had made herself very available to him both yesterday morning and this morning, hinting of her willingness even before he had thought to sound it out. But Flossie was of that lusty breed of females who invited him with raised petticoats and parted legs to the main event without any preamble and then bounced and bucked with unabashed enthusiasm while he delivered. Just as if they ran a race. He doubted if it had lasted longer than two or three minutes either yesterday or today. And then she had been up and straightening her clothes and pocketing his guinea and going on her way to continue with what she had been busy at, almost as if there had been no interruption at all.
He needed more. He would get more—considerably more—from Mrs. Delaney, whose reputation was quite as colorful as his own, though he had never yet had her himself. Tonight he would, and he would feast on her as he had promised, slowly and thoroughly, and several times more than once. He had no doubt that he could expect little sleep of the coming night, but sleep was always worth giving up in a good cause.
He would have her for perhaps a week and then be overcome with an onslaught of conscience over her married state before sounding out one of the two or three other prospects that the guest list had presented to his experienced intuition. Two for certain. The third probable.
Oh, yes, it would be an amusing few weeks. Not the least amusement would be that derived from looking into the faces of Miss and Mrs. Peabody on the day he took his leave of them, his leg still quite, quite free of a shackle. It was perhaps unkind of him to look forward to the moment. Undoubtedly it was. But then, what did kindness have to do with anything?
It was as he was thinking along these rather uncharitable lines, enjoying the quietness of his surroundings and the rare interlude of solitude and relaxation, that he heard the sound. He could not identify it, but it was unmistakably a human sound. A glance to either side showed him that no one was coming through the trees toward the lily pond, but the edge of his vision caught the lightness of some fabric up in the old oak tree close by. It was a dress. Worn by a woman or a girl. Someone who had just been entertained to the events leading up to an assignation. He was very tempted to punish her by sitting where he was for an hour or more. But he was too curious. He had not looked directly at her. He did not know who she was.
“Are you not getting cramped up there?” he asked after five minutes, not looking up. “Would you not like to come down?”
He expected confusion, stuttered apologies, a scrambled descent. A cool voice answered him without hesitation.
“No, thank you,” it said. “I feel safer where I am.”
“Do you indeed?” he said. It was the voice of a young woman. A light, pretty voice—a cultured voice. “Are you afraid I will pounce on you and ravish you here on the ground?”
“I imagine,” she said, “that you expended enough energy in that direction this morning with Flossie. And I would expect you would wish to conserve energy for tonight with Mrs. Delaney. But I would rather be safe than sorry.”
He felt a gust of very genuine amusement. The voice was very matter-of-fact, neither frightened nor accusing. He was reluctant to look up. He was very afraid that the person would not live up to the voice.
“Ravishment is not in my line even when my energy is neither expended nor being conserved,” he said. “You are quite safe from me. You may descend without a qualm. And it might more accurately be said that Flossie seduced me than that I seduced her. Mrs. Delaney, as you must have witnessed, was quite as eager as I to acquire a bedfellow for the night.”
“I thought,” she said, “that you were going to worship her.”
He chuckled and looked up. She was tucked snugly between the massive trunk of the tree and a sturdy branch, her knees drawn up, her arms clasped about them. She was dressed quite unfashionably in drab gray. Her light brown hair was pinned back in a knot at the neck without any nonsense of curls to soften its severity. Her face was thin and rather pale and quite unpretty. Except for the large gray eyes, which looked unblinkingly down into his.
“Little bird,” he said, “you have a sharp tongue. Who are you?” She looked like a governess, except that there were no children at the house. He got to his feet and strolled to the foot of the tree.
“Patricia Mangan,” she said. “It was a foolish question, was it not? You are none the wiser and must either ask another question or walk away.”
“I’ll ask the question,” he said, feeling wonderfully diverted. “Who is Patricia Mangan? Apart from a little bird who likes to eavesdrop on private conversations, that is.”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “I rushed from the house to this spot an hour ago just so that I might listen to all the private conversations that go on below. It must be the busiest spot in all England, sir. But I must express my gratitude to you for insisting upon a private room and a soft bed for your feasting and worshiping.”
He grinned at her. “Would you have been thoroughly embarrassed if I had been less cautious and less patient?” he asked and was rewarded by the sight of Miss Patricia Mangan blushing rosily. He grinned again. “Or perhaps envious?”
“I cannot tell you,” she said, having abandoned the momentary weakness of the blush, “how unspeakably thrilled I would be to be told that the beauty of nature quite paled beside my own. Your sincerity would bring me tumbling out of the tree to comply with your every demand.”
“Ah,” he said, “but I would never say such a thing to you, Miss Mangan. It would be patently untrue.”
“I believe,” she said, “I would prefer the quite ungentlemanly setdown, sir, to the ridiculous flattery to which I was just the unwilling witness. At least the setdown was honest.”
He chuckled. “A woman immune to flattery,” he said. “Almost challenging. Who are you, Patricia Mangan? You still have not told me.”
“You have seen me a dozen times,” she said. “Well, half a dozen, at least. I am the shadow to be seen frequently behind the shoulder of Mrs. Peabody. It is my function in life, sir, to be a shadow. It can be vastly amusing. I hear and see all sorts of things because people do not realize I have eyes and ears. Indeed, people do not even realize I exist. I am Mrs. Peabody’s niece, only daughter of her brother, the Reverend Samuel Mangan, who committed the unpardonable sin of dying without a penny to his name. My aunt rescued me from destitution, sir.”
“And took you to her bosom as if you were her own daughter,” he said. Was she speaking the truth? Had he seen her before? Was she frequently in Mrs. Peabody’s shadow, at her constant beck and call? He had not noticed her.
“Yes,” she said. “Or so she tells me several times each day—whenever I do something to displease her.”
“Dear me,” he said. “Are you really so disagreeable and so disobedient, Miss Mangan?”
“Oh, more so,” she said. “I pretend to be obliging just so that I will not be turned off and have to beg my bread in the streets. You ought not to be dallying with either Flossie or Mrs. Delaney, you know. You are to marry Nancy—or so she and Mrs. Peabody say.”
“Am I?” he said. “But I am not married to her yet, little bird. Perhaps I am sowing my wild oats before settling to a sober and blameless married life. Or perhaps I am an incurable rake and will continue with my wicked ways until my life is at an end. And perhaps it is none of your business.”
“Nothing ever is,” she said. “But I would remind you, sir, that you are the one who chose to talk to me. I was quite content to sit in silence and watch the clouds scud by. That is why I came here, you know.”
“You escaped?” he asked. “You flew the nest?”
“Perhaps Mrs. Peabody went into the village with some of the lady guests,” she said. “Perhaps I had finished the tasks she had left me and had an hour or so to myself. And perhaps now I will be late back at the house and will be scolded. And perhaps it is none of your business.”
“Touche!” he said. “Come down from there, Miss Mangan. We will walk back to the house together.”
“So that I may be seen in your company and be thought to be setting my cap at you?” she said. “I would be scolded for a week without a pause for breath, sir. I can escort myself back to the house, I thank you.”
“Come down!” he commanded. He had the notion that she was a small female and wanted to confirm the impression. He did not like small females, being rather on the tall side himself. He liked tall, generously endowed women.
“Oh, yes sir, right away, sir, if you are going to use that tone of voice on me,” she said. She came down the tree with sure, agile movements, as if it was something she was quite accustomed to. She had trim ankles encased in white stockings, he could not help but see. Not that he had been even trying to avert his gaze. “You had better stand well back if you do not wish to be bowled over. I have to jump from the bottom branch.”
“Allow me,” he said, making her his most elegant bow and then reaching up and lifting her down before she had a chance to tell him if she would allow him or not.
His hands almost met about her waist. She was as light as the proverbial feather. When he set her down, the top of her head reached perhaps to his chin. Not the width of one hair higher. She was slender almost to the point of thinness.
Those large eyes of hers looked up into his. “Certainly,” she said. “Yes, do please help me down, sir. I may slip and sprain an ankle if left to myself. But now that you have done so, you may remove your hands from my waist whenever you wish.”
From sheer principle he took his time about doing so. “Tell me,” he said, “do you have to use a knife with your meals, or is your tongue sharp enough without?”
“I could almost pity Nancy,” she said. “You are not really a gentleman, are you?”
“I have been severely provoked,” he said. He offered her his arm, which she took after a moment’s hesitation, and began to lead her slowly through the trees in the direction of the house. “You could always save poor Miss Peabody by warning her about my, ah, expenditures of energy this morning and tonight.”
“Ah, but she already knows you are a rake,” she said. “It is your greatest attraction in her eyes. Well, almost the greatest.”
The greatest being that he could elevate her to the rank of baroness at some distant time, he supposed.
“Of course,” she added, “she will expect you to be a reformed rake once you are married.”
“Ugh!” he said.
“Reformed rakes are said to be the best, most constant of husbands,” she said.
“Best as meaning most experienced?” he asked. He was enjoying himself more than he had since leaving behind his male cronies in London. “Constant as meaning most constantly able to please in— You are steeling yourself not to blush again, are you not, Miss Mangan?”
“And you are thoroughly enjoying trying to make me do so, sir,” she said. “I would have you remember, if you will, that I am the daughter of a parson.”
“Why are you so different from your cousin?” he asked. “Why are you dressed so differently? Why were you not with her in London for the Season? Were you there?”
