A Rogue's Downfall, page 9
He could cheerfully throttle her. He had been so close to getting himself out of the most damnable mess he had been in in his life. So close to freedom. His mind had already been inventing an aged relative at death’s door and a few other fond relatives who had written to beg his immediate presence at the event. He had already in his mind been away from a potentially dull house party and away from a dreaded marriage.
Until she, the sweet young thing, Miss Caroline Astor, had come along with her noble lie to save her brother from having a bullet placed between his eyes or a sword sheathed through his heart. If she had only known it, it was the exact midpoint between her eyes that he had pictured for one ungallant moment with a blackened hole through it.
And so here he was, a betrothed man in effect if not quite yet in reality. The formal offer was still to make, though the contract had been discussed and agreed upon. But if the girl—woman—had such an enormous dowry, the viscount thought, frowning, why the devil was she still unmarried at the age of three-and-twenty? And she was admittedly pretty too. What was wrong with her? Something must be—a pleasant thought to lie in one’s stomach in place of breakfast.
If he made his offer with great care, he thought, throwing himself down on his bed and staring upward . . . If he made himself thoroughly disagreeable . . . But no. Honor was involved. If it were not, he would not even be making the offer. He grimaced.
She had not even looked at him after that one glance before entering the room. She had not even named him. She had referred to him only as “he.” And she had lied through her teeth, not to protect him, but to save her brother’s hide. And she had looked thoroughly humorless and belligerent while she was doing so. She had red hair—well, auburn anyway. She was bound to be a bad-tempered shrew. That was all he needed in his life.
A damned attractive shrew, of course. His temperature slid up a degree when he remembered . . . But not attractive enough to make a leg-shackle seem any better than a life sentence. The woman did not live who was that attractive.
Damn!
Perhaps after they were betrothed. The viscount set one arm over his eyes and thought. He could make himself extremely obnoxious if he tried. Gaze admiringly at himself in looking glasses and windows when he ought to be complimenting her on her appearance. Talk incessantly about himself. Boast about some of his conquests. Sneer at anything and everything he found her to be interested in. Within the week he could have her screaming to be released from her promise.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed and ran his fingers through his hair. Gad, but it went against the grain. All his attentions toward women were usually designed to attract, not to repel. However, it would be in a good cause. Good for him and good for her too. If she only knew it, he would be doing her the greatest favor in the world. He would make the world’s worst husband. The woman would be miserable within a fortnight of marriage.
He got resolutely to his feet. He had arranged with Brindley to talk with her before luncheon. He was suddenly eager to get the thing over with so that he could proceed to the serious business of freeing both of them again. He wondered if he could charm any of the female servants into serving him a late breakfast. He did not fancy making a marriage proposal on an empty stomach.
Not that he really fancied making one on a full stomach either, of course.
He was going to make her a marriage proposal. And it seemed that everything had been arranged already. The proposal itself and her acceptance of it were to be a mere formality.
It had never struck her. Not through a largely sleepless night—she would have said it was entirely sleepless except that there were memories of bizarre erotic dreams. And not through an anxious early morning. She had visualized public denunciations and duels and horrible embarrassment. She had pictured all kinds of punishments that might be visited upon Viscount Lyndon, almost all of which would undoubtedly harm Royston more than the real culprit. But she had never imagined that anyone would consider marriage between the two of them necessary.
And yes, of course she must listen to the offer, Royston had said in a coldly furious voice when he had finally appeared in her room and dismissed a grimly vigilant Letty. And accept it too. He did not know what had come over her. Did she have no pride in herself or her family name? Did she not know Lyndon’s reputation? Did she think any but the most unprincipled rake would have agreed to meet her in her bedchamber at night?
She had been unable to defend herself. After all she was the one who had said the viscount was in her room by her invitation. She had merely muttered something about love and romance and just a very few minutes during which to say a private good night.
“Love,” her brother had said with the utmost contempt. “Romance. With someone like Lyndon, Caroline? Well, you will have them for what they are worth for the rest of your lifetime. I wish you happy.”
She could have him for the rest of a lifetime. Caroline sighed. She could marry him. She could be his betrothed within the coming hour. Viscount Lyndon, over whom the romantical and foolish side of her nature had sighed from afar for months while the sensible part of herself had assured her that it was as well that she admired only from afar. That it was as well his eyes had never alighted on her.
She was to meet him on the terrace half an hour before noon. She wandered there five minutes early, well knowing that it would have been far better to be five minutes late. She smiled cheerfully at five of her young relatives, who were embarking on a walk to the woods half a mile distant, and expressed her regrets at being unable to go with them.
“I am meeting someone,” she said.
“I hope he is tall, dark, and handsome,” Irene said with a laugh.
And then he was coming through the double front doors and down the horseshoe steps and along the terrace toward her. Toward her. And looking at her. She had never been this close to him before—except last night, of course, and briefly this morning in Royston’s dressing room. He had never looked at her. He was indeed very tall and dark. And handsome. And if she was not careful, she was going to be sighing and making cow eyes and be no better at all than Eugenia.
“Good morning, my lord,” she said and listened with approval to the coolness of her voice.
“Miss Astor.” He inclined his head and extended one arm. “Shall we walk?” He indicated the formal gardens before the house and the lawn that sloped beyond it toward the distant beach. The driveway and the road were behind the house.
She took his arm and glanced along it to a strong, long-fingered, well-manicured hand. The very hand that had come inside her nightgown and fondled her breast. She felt as if she had just been running for a mile uphill but quelled the urge to pant.
“I am afraid,” he said, “that I have caused you a great deal of distress, ma’am, both last night and this morning.”
The best way to cope with her very schoolgirlish reactions, Caroline decided, was to withdraw into herself, to keep her eyes directed toward the ground before her feet, and to keep her mouth shut as much as possible.
“You must allow me to make some reparation,” he said. '
They were strolling past brightly colored flowerbeds. All the flowers were blooming in perfect symmetry, she thought and wondered how the gardeners did it.
“It would give me great satisfaction if you would do me the honor of marrying me,” he said.
Caroline Scott, Viscountess Lyndon. One day to be a marchioness. Wife to such a splendidly gorgeous man. Mother to his children. The envy of every woman of the ton. And the proud owner of their pity too as her husband philandered his way through the rest of their lives. Ah, it was such a dreadful pity. And it was taking a superhuman effort to put common sense before inclination. Perhaps she would wake soon from the bizarre dream that had begun some time the night before.
“I am sorry,” he said, bending his head closer to hers and covering her hand on his arm with his, “you are quite overwhelmed, are you not? I am more sorry than I can say to be the cause of such bewilderment. Would you like some time to consider your answer?”
“No,” she said, her voice as calm as it had been before and quite at variance with the beating of her heart, “I do not need any longer, my lord.”
“Ah,” he said, his tone brisker, “then it is settled. You have made me very happy, ma’am.” He raised her hand to his lips.
She spoke with the deepest regret. “I am afraid you have misunderstood, my lord,” she said. “My answer is no.”
“No?” He stopped walking abruptly in order to stare down at her. Her hand was still clasped in his.
“I will not marry you,” she said, “though I thank you for the offer, my lord. It was kind of you.”
“Kind?” he said, a new sharpness in his voice. “I believe you are the one who does not understand, Miss Astor. I compromised you last night. I must marry you.”
Ah, romance, Caroline thought with an inward sigh. Whenever she had daydreamed about him, he had been gazing at her, eyes alight with admiration and passion. His eyes up close were even more beautiful than she had dreamed of their being, but they were frowning down at her as if she were a particularly nasty slug that had crawled out onto the path after the early morning mist.
“It seems a singularly foolish reason for marrying,” she said. “Nothing really happened, after all.” She willed herself not to flush, with woeful lack of success.
“Miss Astor,” he said, “not only was I alone with you in your bedchamber last night, but I was also naked in your bed with you.” Caroline would not have been surprised to see flames dancing to life on her cheeks. “We were seen together by your maid with the result that the story is by now doubtless common knowledge belowstairs. I admitted the truth of what happened to your brother with the result that a considerable number of people abovestairs probably know by now. And you even confessed to having invited me into your bed.”
“Into my room,” she said. “To say good night.”
“Inviting a man into your room at night,” he said, “is the same thing as inviting him into your bed, ma’am. And saying good night under such circumstances is the same thing as making love. It seems that your education in such matters is somewhat lacking. We have no choice but to marry, Miss Astor.”
“Letty will have said nothing,” she said, “and neither will Royston unless he has unburdened his mind to Cynthia. She will not spread the story. The idea that we must marry is ridiculous.”
He had released her hand to clasp his hands behind him. He regarded her in silence for a while. She looked up into his face, memorizing its features, in particular the rather heavy-lidded blue eyes. She tried to memorize his height and the breadth of his shoulders. She knew she would dream of last night and this morning for weeks, perhaps months to come. And she knew that a part of her would forever regret that she had not seized the moment and made herself miserable for the rest of her life.
“You know nothing about me. Is that it?” he asked. “Your brother is satisfied that I will be able to keep you in the kind of life to which you are accustomed, Miss Astor. I have estates and a fortune of my own. I am also heir to a marquess’s title and fortune. Is it your ignorance of these facts that has made you reluctant?”
“I knew them,” she said. “You are not exactly an unknown figure in London, my lord, and I was there for the Season this spring.”
“Were you?” he said, looking her over in a way that confirmed her conviction that he had never knowingly set eyes on her before this week. “Your objection to me is more personal then?”
Her mouth opened and the words came out before she could check them. All she would have to say was that she objected to being forced into marriage because of a mere mistake in identifying a room. But that was not what she said.
“You have a reputation as perhaps the most dreadful rake in England, my lord,” she said.
“Do I?” His manner became instantly haughty. He looked twice as handsome if that were possible. “I thought women were supposed to have a soft spot for rakes, Miss Astor. You are not one of them?”
“Not as a husband,” she said. “I would be a fool.”
“And clearly you are not,” he said. “So I am being rejected because I like to bed women and have never made a secret of the fact.”
She thought for a moment. Yes, that was it exactly. Alas. “Yes,” she said.
“And you would not like to be bedded by me, Miss Astor?”
Yes, she had been right to describe his eyes secretly to herself as slumbrous, Caroline thought. They were exactly that and his voice low and seductive. And then the meaning of his words echoed in her ears.
“No,” she said. “When I marry, my lord, I want to know that I am everything to my husband. I want to know that I am the only woman in his life and always will be.”
“If you—and your maid—had awoken just a few minutes later last night,” he said, “you might have been singing a different tune this morning. The bedding process had barely begun and yet your body was responding with pleasure. There was a great deal more to come. A very great deal.”
“Do you mean,” she said, beginning to feel indignant, “that I would have been begging for more this morning? Begging even for marriage so that the pleasure could be repeated?”
“I could make you fall hopelessly in love with me in no time at all,” he said, reaching out one long finger and carelessly flicking her cheek with it.
“Poppycock!” she said, now so thoroughly angry that she totally forgot that she was in love with him already.
“I would wager my fortune on it,” he said. “One day is all I would need.”
She drew breath audibly. “The assumption being,” she said, “that there is everything to fall in love with in you and nothing in me. I would fall in love with you in the course of a day, but you, of course, would remain quite immune to my charms. You are a conceited, a-a conceited—”
“Ass?” he suggested, raising his eyebrows.
“Fop, sir,” she finished with a flourish. She was glad all this had happened. Oh, she was glad. The scales had fallen from her eyes and she could see him at last for what he was—not so much a charming rake as a conceited ass. She wished she had had the courage to say the word aloud.
“Well,” he said, “perhaps we should make a formal wager, Miss Astor, since we seem not about to make a formal betrothal after all. Twenty-four hours. At the end of it if I have fallen in love with you I lose my wager of—shall we say fifty pounds? If you have fallen in love with me, you lose yours. If we both win or both lose, then we end up even. Agreed?” He stretched out an imperious right hand toward her.
“Either one of us would be foolish to admit to having fallen,” she said, “when it would mean the loss of fifty pounds and the ridicule or pity of the other.”
“Ah, but we must trust to each other’s honor and honesty,” he said. “Do we have an agreement, Miss Astor? It will mean spending the rest of today and tomorrow morning together, of course. As for tonight, we can discuss that later.”
“What utter nonsense,” she said, staring down at his hand and remembering the strangely pleasurable pain she had felt when two of his fingers had squeezed her nipple. “I have no wish to spend any more time with you, my lord, and as for this wager you suggest, it is stupid. What if one of us does fall in love with the other? What if we both do? Nothing will have changed. It is just stupid.”
“In the clubs of London, Miss Astor,” he said, “it is considered the mark of the most abject cowardice to refuse a wager. A man can easily lose his honor by doing so.”
“I am not a man,” she said.
“I had noticed.”
Again the seductive voice. She did not look up to observe his eyes. She slapped her hand down onto his.
“This is stupid,” she said.
“I take it you are accepting the wager?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said as his hand closed about hers. “But it is stupid.” She looked up to find him grinning down at her. His teeth were very white and even. His eyes crinkled at the comers when he smiled and those lovely blue eyes danced with merriment. Round one to Viscount Lyndon, she thought as her knees turned to jelly. But of course she no longer loved him. She despised him.
“This,” he said, raising her hand to his lips again, “is going to be a pleasure, ma’am—Caroline. The beach for a walk after luncheon?”
What he should do, Viscount Lyndon thought as he changed after luncheon for a walk on the beach, was summon his carriage and have his coachman drive him directly to London and deposit him at the doors of Bethlehem Hospital. He should have himself fitted into a straitjacket. He was clearly mad.
He had had his ticket to freedom again. The woman had refused him though he had made his offer with no attempt whatsoever to repel her. He had even behaved with strict honor by trying to insist when she had first rejected him. He had tried to make her see that she had no choice but to marry him. Still she had refused.
It should have been like a dream come true. He should have left her at a run and not stopped until there were a few hundred miles between them. He should have shouted with joy as soon as he was out of earshot. He had been free again, free of a leg-shackle and free of obligation, his honor intact.
Instead of which ... He scowled at his image in the looking glass and decided against wearing a hat. It would probably blow into the sea anyway on such a breezy day. Instead of which he had taken her refusal as a personal affront and had demanded to know the reason why. And as soon as he had discovered the reason—her aversion to marrying a rake—all his old instincts had come into play. His very self-respect had made him incapable of letting her go unconquered.
Poppycock, she had said when he had told her—quite truthfully but with rash stupidity—that he could make her fall hopelessly in love with him in a day. And so he had set about doing just that. It would be easy, of course. He would not even need the full twenty-four hours. But what was his purpose? If she fell in love with him, she would marry him after all.
