A Rogue's Downfall, page 8
But before his mind could even begin to grapple with the impossibility of saying anything that might ease the situation, the maid was beating him about the head and shoulders with one large fist and he leapt out of bed in sheer self-defense.
The maid shrieked.
The sweet young thing dived beneath the bed covers.
“Oh, Lord,” the viscount said, grabbing his pantaloons and dragging them on and then reaching down for his shirt and stockings. “I do beg your pardon, ma’am. Wrong room. I thought it was my own. I must have taken a wrong turn. I am so sorry to have inconvenienced you.”
He left the room just as the maid was recovering from the shock of being subjected to the sight of a naked aroused man and was setting down the candle, the better to use both fists. She did not come after him.
He regained his own room with ungainly and unwise haste, though he met no one on the way from the east wing to the west. He hurled his shirt and stockings to the floor of his bedchamber and swore fluently enough to have made even the most seasoned soldier blush.
Stupid, stupid, stupid! What did he know of inner or outer corridors? Or of third doors or fourth doors? What did he know of Elmdon Hall that he had thought he could go creeping about it in the dark and find unerringly the widow of easy morals who was panting for his body?
Perhaps what he should have felt first was embarrassment. But Viscount Lyndon was no fool, even if he sometimes behaved with incredible stupidity. He knew immediately that any embarrassment he might feel was as nothing to the consequences of his deed that were facing him. He could not remember who the girl was, though he had been presented to all the other guests on his arrival. He could not remember who her father was. Was she Brindley’s sister? Yes, he rather believed she was. But one thing he knew for certain. He was going to be seeking out that father or brother as early in the morning as he was to be found—before the father or brother could find him, in fact. He was going to be making his offer for the girl before the father or brother had a chance to blow out his brains on some field of honor. Or perhaps the man would not even consider him worthy of a field of honor. Maybe he would just organize a company of thugs to horsewhip him and render his face unrecognizable before hurling him off Elmdon property.
Perhaps that would be the better alternative too. He would recover from a thorough drubbing. He would not recover from a leg shackle. Except that honor was at the stake, of course. The girl had been compromised. Quite spectacularly compromised. She must be offered for.
If there was any obscenity or blasphemy that the viscount had missed in his first tirade, he certainly made no such omission with the second.
The rest of the night did not bring him a great deal of sleep.
At first Caroline Astor tried with great earnestness to persuade Letty never to say anything about the night’s proceedings. It would be their sworn secret, she said, clutching the blankets to her bosom and feeling rather as if she were trying to lock the stable doors after the horse had bolted. The buttons of her nightgown were still open to the waist. After all, Viscount Lyndon himself was not likely to go about boasting of the episode.
But she flushed at her own words. Would he? He was known, and well known at that, as the most dreadful rake. Perhaps it had been deliberate. Perhaps he made a habit of invading the rooms and the persons of unsuspecting females. Perhaps if Letty had not appeared when she had, he would have ravished her. Caroline, that was, not Letty. Letty planted her fists on ample hips. “Lord Brindley is to know it for sure, mum,” she said. It was pronouncement more than statement. “Right this minute.”
Caroline ventured a staying hand from beneath the blankets. “Oh, not tonight, Letty,” she said. “He will be remarkably cross if we wake him. And it is quite unlikely that Lord Lyndon will return. Is there a lock on the door?”
“There is not,” Letty said. “I shall sleep at the foot of your bed, mum. Let him just try to get past me.”
“I am sure he will not,” Caroline said.
“First thing in the morning,” Letty said. “I shall summon your brother here, mum, and you can tell him or I will. It is all the same to me.”
“I shall tell him,” Caroline said, licking dry lips. “But it was all a dreadful mistake, Letty. He mistook my room for his. You heard him say so.”
“Does he have a wife that he mistook for you?” Letty asked with a theatrical sniff. “I think not, mum. He is a bad one, that. And he was not dressed decent even for his own bed. He was—” Her bosom swelled with the memory of the indecency of the viscount’s dress or lack thereof.
“Yes, he was,” Caroline said hastily, remembering the glimpse she had had of magnificent naked maleness before she had dived beneath the covers. And the glimpse of the splendid and terrifyingly large part of his anatomy to which she would blush to put a name even in her thoughts.
Letty strode off to drag her truckle bed in from the dressing room. She set it across the foot of her mistress’s bed and lay on it like a large and fierce watchdog. Caroline blew out the candle.
And stared upward into the darkness, knowing that she would not have another wink of sleep that night. She should have been hysterical. She should have been rushing to the comfort of her brother’s protective arms. She should have woken the whole house with her screams. She certainly should not have been making excuses for Viscount Lyndon to Letty. Doubtless she would not have done so had she not been very foolishly in love with him since she first set eyes on him months before.
She had turned down two perfectly eligible marriage proposals, much to the puzzlement and chagrin of her brother, because of that stupid infatuation. In love with London’s worst rake, indeed! It was about the only foolish thing of which she could accuse herself in three-and-twenty years of living. She had been remarkably sensible all her life. The normal Caroline would have accepted the first of those offers during the Season with pleased satisfaction. She would not have dreamed of love and forever after in the arms of a handsome libertine.
Her heart and her stomach—all her insides—had turned several complete handsprings when she had found out that he was a guest at Great-Aunt Sabrina’s birthday party. He was so very gloriously handsome with his tall, slender, well-muscled frame and handsome features that happened to include two slumbrous and very blue eyes. And then there was his hair, dark and thick and shining, dressed in the latest style.
Any other woman but Caroline, feeling as she did about him, might have been sighing all over him and making cow eyes at him as that silly Eugenia had been doing all day. Caroline had done just the opposite and behaved as if she had not noticed his existence—just as she had behaved at every ball and other entertainment during the Season where both he and she had happened to be.
After all, there was no point in trying to attract his interest, was there? Rakes wanted only one thing from a woman and even that for a very short time. Rakes did not deal in love and marriage and forever after. Caroline prided herself on her good sense. She might secretly sigh over the man, but she knew that he could only make her desperately unhappy even if he deigned to show an interest in her. She was going to accept the very next proposal she received—provided the man was eligible, of course. And provided he was at least moderately handsome. And amiable.
Caroline turned over onto her side and curled up into her favorite position for sleep. Could she smell him on the pillow beside her? What an absurd idea. She could not remember how he had smelled, and the pillow smelled like—well, like pillow.
The stupid thing—the really stupid thing—was that she had thought for some time that she was dreaming. It had seemed like one of those dreams in which one knows one is dreaming and is willing oneself not to wake up. She had known that she was dreaming about him and she had wanted the dream to continue. She had liked feeling the weight and heat of his body beside her in bed and the touch of his hand moving back her hair so that he could kiss her cheek. She had moved her head so that he could kiss her lips. Actually, she might have known then that she was not really dreaming. She had never thought about a tongue being involved in a kiss. But it had been delightful to feel his moving across her upper lip. And then to feel his hand moving over her body, lightly exploring.
It was only when he started to open her buttons that she had realized that she could no longer hold on to the dream. She was waking up with the greatest reluctance—only to find that she was not after all leaving the dream behind. Only to find that she had not in fact been dreaming at all. And then his hand had been inside and touching her breast, bringing a strange aching sort of pain as he pinched her nipple. And his tongue had no longer been tracing her lips, but sliding deep into her mouth.
That was when dreams and reality had finally parted company and she realized not only that she was not sleeping, but that she did not know the identity of the man who was sharing her bed and who seemed intent on sharing her person too. That was when she had gone berserk.
And all the time it really had been he. The Viscount Lyndon. That was how rakes touched women, then, and how they kissed. And how they looked. Or that was how he looked, anyway. Oh, mercy, she had had no idea ... It must hurt dreadfully, she thought. Or else be unbearably pleasurable. Or perhaps both.
Her cheeks burned and she tried not to listen to Letty’s snores. What would Royston do tomorrow? she wondered. Whisk her away back home? Challenge the viscount to a duel? It was clear what had happened, of course. He had spent the whole day with Lady Plumtree, understandably since the lady was both beautiful and not all she should be, if gossip had the right of it. And Lady Plumtree was in the room next to Caroline’s. He had mistaken the room, all right, but not because he had thought Caroline’s room to be his own. He had been going to spend the night with Lady Plumtree. He had been starting to make love to her, Caroline, thinking she was Lady Plumtree.
What would have come next? she wondered and grew even hotter at the imagined next stages of what he had started. How long would it have been before . . .
Caroline sat up sharply and thumped her pillow as if she wished it were Viscount Lyndon’s face.
Or Lady Plumtree’s perhaps.
Royston Astor, Lord Brindley, was in a bad mood, having quarreled with his wife again that morning. And again over Caroline. There was no one particularly eligible at this party, she had pointed out. They were wasting a whole week, when they could be in Brighton or somewhere else where Caroline could meet someone suitable to marry.
It had been in vain for him to remind Cynthia that family duty dictated that they put in this appearance at Elmdon Hall and that Caroline had met and rejected two quite eligible gentlemen during the past few months. She was three-and-twenty, Cynthia had said with that slow distinctness she always used when trying to make a particularly telling point, and had only just made her come-out. That was not his fault either, he had said, grumbling. First Caroline had not wanted a come-out and Papa had not fought against her wishes. Then Grandpapa died, plunging them all into mourning, and then Papa.
Caroline was not in her dotage after all, he had pointed out. Cynthia had given him a speaking glance as if to say that yes, indeed, she was. To give her her due, Cynthia’s preoccupation with marrying Caroline off was motivated more by affection than by the desire to get rid of a superfluous sister-in-law.
Lord Brindley’s neckcloth would never tie neatly when he was in a bad mood. He had noticed it before. There was a tap on his dressing room door and he turned to scowl at his valet as if the man were personally responsible for the uncooperative neckcloth. But he had merely come to announce that Viscount Lyndon would be obliged for a few minutes of his time.
Lord Brindley frowned. Lyndon? He had been annoyed, to say the least, to find that that irresponsible ass, Colin, had invited a man like Lyndon to such a respectable gathering. One did not feel that one’s women were safe with such a libertine in the house. Cynthia he could protect very well himself. But Caroline? She should have been put in a room next to theirs, he had complained to Cynthia on their arrival. He had at least insisted that his sister’s maid sleep in her dressing room at night. One never knew with someone like Lyndon.
“Me?” he said to his valet. “You are sure he said me, Barnes?”
Barnes merely coughed discreetly, and Lord Brindley realized that the viscount was standing behind him, outside the door. What the devil?
“Come inside, Lyndon,” he said ungraciously. “I am getting ready for breakfast. Disgusting misty morning, is it not? I was unable to go riding.”
Viscount Lyndon stepped inside and succeeded only in making Lord Brindley feel dwarfed. His mood was not improved.
“I am afraid I have a matter of some delicacy to discuss,” the viscount said.
Lord Brindley met his eyes in the looking glass and stopped fidgeting with his neckcloth, which was doomed to looking lopsided anyway no matter what he did with it. He raised his eyebrows and turned to face the room.
“I feel constrained to ask for the honor of making a marriage offer to your sister,” the viscount said.
The baron snapped his teeth together when he realized that his jaw had been in danger of dropping. “Eh?” he said. “Is this some kind of joke, Lyndon?”
“I wish it were,” the viscount said, his initial unease seeming to disappear somewhat now that he had launched into speech. “I can see that she has not said anything to you yet.”
“Eh?” Lord Brindley realized that his response was not profound, but really what did one say to such unexpected and strange words?
“I am afraid,” the viscount said, one corner of his mouth lifting in a wry smile, “that I compromised Miss Astor last night. Rather badly, I am afraid.”
Lord Brindley’s hands curled into fists at his sides. To do him justice, he did not at the moment think of the vast difference in size and physique between the other man and himself.
“I mistook her room for, er, someone else’s,” the viscount explained. “Her virtue is intact,” he added hastily, “but not, I am afraid, her honor. I beg leave to set matters right by offering her the protection of my name.”
“Your name?" the baron said, injecting a world of irony into the words and using some of his wife’s slow distinctness.
“I beg your pardon,” the viscount said stiffly. “Is my name sullied and I know nothing of it? I have the name and the position and the means with which to provide for Miss Astor for the rest of her life.”
“I would rather see her thrown into a lions’ den,” Lord Brindley said. “You did not take her virtue, you said?”
“No,” the viscount said. “She awoke in time to fight me off, and her maid arrived to champion her cause.”
Caroline and Lyndon? Lyndon touching Caroline? And thinking to marry her? It was perhaps a good thing that none of Lord Brindley’s gloves were in sight. Perhaps he would have slapped one in the viscount’s face and been precipitated into a dreadfully scandalous situation with which to celebrate his great-aunt’s birthday.
“I will make my offer this morning,” the viscount said. “With your permission, Brindley. I cannot think you mean what you just said about lions.”
“What you will do this morning,” Lord Brindley said, his hands opening and closing at his sides, “is pack your belongings, order your carriage around, and take yourself off with whatever plausible excuse for leaving you can contrive in the meanwhile. I will give you one hour, Lyndon, before coming after you with a whip. I trust I make myself understood?”
The viscount pursed his lips. But before either man could say another word, there was a second tap on the door and it opened to reveal a pale Caroline. She glanced at Viscount Lyndon, blanched still further, and stepped inside, closing the door behind her.
“Barnes said you were in here, Royston,” she said, looking directly at him and ignoring the viscount just as if he were not even there, “and not to be disturbed. But I could not wait. There is going to be a duel, is there not? It will not do. For one thing the whole matter will be made dreadfully public, and for another, you are expert with neither a sword nor a pistol. He is, so I have heard. I will not have you killed for my sake.”
“Caroline—” her brother began, but she held up a firm staying hand.
“It must not happen, Royston,” she said, lifting her chin and looking at him with a martial gleam in her eyes, “or I shall reveal the full truth to everyone.” There was a flush of color in her cheeks suddenly.
“The full truth?”
“That he was in my room by invitation,” she said. “That if he compromised me, then I also compromised myself. A duel would be quite inappropriate, you see. You will withdraw the challenge, will you not?”
The viscount, Lord Brindley saw in one quick glance, was standing looking back at him, his expression utterly blank. If the baron could have throttled his sister at that moment and remained within the law, he would have done so. The minx. The slut. He had thought her sensible despite her strange rejection of two chances of an advantageous match during the Season. And yet she had given in to the damnably improper advances of a rake just like the most brainless of chits. Well, let her take the consequences.
“There will be no duel, Caroline,” he said. “Leave us, please. Viscount Lyndon and I have certain matters to discuss.”
She looked at him a little uncertainly, then seemed about to slide her eyes in the direction of the viscount, changed her mind, turned, and left the room. The viscount had stood still and quiet throughout her visit.
“Well,” Lord Brindley said briskly, “we have a marriage contract to discuss, Lyndon. Have a seat. There is no time like the present, I suppose, despite the fact that we may miss breakfast.”
Viscount Lyndon took a seat.
If he could do anything he wanted to the girl with utter impunity, Viscount Lyndon decided as he returned to his own room a considerable time later, he would throttle her. No, she was not a girl. He had seen that as soon as he had had a good look at her. She was past girlhood. She was three-and-twenty, according to her brother. Thank goodness for that, at least. If he must marry—he winced—then let it at least be to a woman and not a girl straight from the schoolroom.
