A Well Pleasured Lady (14 page)

“Oh, Lord Whitfield.” Her red mouth puckered, her eyes slid shut, and she gave the impression of a woman on the verge of rapture. “You've made me so happy.”

“Good. Well. I'd best leave now.” He jerked away, sure that she'd marked him with those talons of hers. Not that he needed more marks.

“Shall I tell my father?”

“Tell him what?”

“That you've expressed an…interest.” Seemingly
on its own, one of her breasts popped free of its confinement.

“I'm betrothed to your cousin.” Sprinting toward the door, he jerked it open. “Mustn't betray her.”

“But, darling…”

Daisy's reproachful voice echoed in his mind as he hustled down the corridor. He knew damn well what that woman wanted from him, and it wasn't his manly form or his nonexistent repartee. It was his fortune. A Fairchild woman could easily impersonate a shattered innocent to get her hands on so much money.

So he needed an alibi. He needed one now.

He could go to the boxing room where the young bucks practiced knocking each other senseless. Unfortunately, there he would be forced to endure teasing about the beatings he had endured at Mary's hands.

Of course, the last beating hadn't been administered by
her
fists, but the guests thought otherwise. They had loudly speculated that he'd trifled with Mary again and come out the worse for it.

He didn't deny it, mostly because the ton wouldn't have believed him, but also because the constantly circling flock of buzzardlike suitors maintained a respectful distance from Mary's fists. No other man wished to be taunted that a woman had beaten him up.

Hell, Sebastian didn't want to be taunted. He didn't even want to care, but he did. These people who thought so much of themselves should be inconsequential to him. But in the years before he'd made
his fortune, he'd been mocked often, and found himself unable to take their sniggering lightly.

So he couldn't go to the boxing room, and he refused to run the gauntlet of laughter in the dining room where the meal was set up.

That left the game room. The gamblers were always so deep in their cards—and their cups—they wouldn't note the time of his arrival, and they would provide a plausible alibi in case…well, in case that Daisy sought to bag him tonight.

Satisfied with his destination, he strode along the corridor. All the unmarried women were housed in the west wing, he'd discovered. Yet Mary's bedchamber was the only one he wanted to enter. He wanted to enter it so badly, he had consciously avoided it—partly because of his fear of ambush, but mostly because she made him insane. She had him by the curly hairs, and she acted as if she didn't know it. Worse, she acted as if she didn't care.

He walked to her door and placed his hand on it. He felt the vibrations of her presence, and he knew she was inside. He'd seen her shudder as she walked into a gathering. He'd seen her glancing over her shoulder as if she expected to be stabbed in the back. He'd seen her grow more and more uneasy as the days wore on.

She
didn't
know that he hated to see her flirting with other men, or that he found comfort in the fact she did it poorly. Yet no one seemed to be immune to her charms. Even the merchant, Mr. Everett Brindley, seemed captivated by her, and from previous
business dealings, Sebastian could have sworn he was a cold fish, interested only in money and politics.

Bringing Mary should have simplified the task Sebastian had set himself. He thought that using her as a distraction would grant him the time he needed to find his godmother's diary, secure it, and save the country—and his business—from revolution.

Instead, her presence had complicated every aspect of his life, and now his encounter with Daisy forced him to reach a reluctant conclusion. He would have to let Mary open the safe.

Well, why not? Every day they stayed, he trusted her more. Every day he liked her more. Every day he marveled at her intelligence, at her beauty…at her allure.

And he wouldn't find her alluring if he didn't trust her.

His breath quickened and his heart beat faster.

He was almost dizzy at such a revelation. Then reality struck him like a glove. He snickered at himself. He was a shipping baron. He'd earned his fortune through a combination of guts and sharp intelligence, and he knew better than any man there was no correlation between allure and trust. It was Old Horning that found Mary alluring. But his mind, his heart, found her trustworthy.

He stroked the painted panel as he might stroke her skin.

After they were away from this tomb of festering corruption, he might call on her, and then they might—

But he didn't want to see Mary occasionally. He wanted her with him all the time, and he wanted to take her to bed. Only to bed. And she was a Fairchild, he was a Durant, and he'd be betraying his parents with every fond caress.

Funny, that he could have easily fornicated with Mary when he believed her to be without conscience, but when she proved to be so much more, he faced a moral dilemma. He almost wished she would show her Fairchild traits so he could take her as he longed to.

But the only place he would take her was down to Bubb's study, early tomorrow morning, to open the safe. And after they'd returned the diary to Lady Valéry, he'd take Mary back to her chamber and he'd tell her…he'd tell her…

The door across the hall snapped open and Uncle Leslie stumbled out under the impetus of a slippered foot.

“You are a disgusting creature,” Lady Valéry's voice said from the inside of her chamber. “You have neither the dubious charm nor the physical attributes of your brothers, and I do not know why you would think me desperate enough to welcome you into my bed. Don't come back.”

The door shut with a slam, and Leslie glanced up and down the hall. When he spotted Sebastian, his rouged cheeks reddened more, and he blustered, “She's a woman of passion, your godmother.”

Sebastian allowed his mouth to curl in one of his
most effective sneers. “It seems she has conceived a heated one for you.”

Leslie moved his plate of ivory teeth within his mouth. Without a doubt, he hated Sebastian, and hated more that his humiliation had been witnessed. But he wasn't a bright man, and in lieu of a brilliant retort, he fell back on the old scandal. “My niece is a woman of a passionate nature, too. You'd best guard her stable carefully, or the newest Whitfield mare will throw a piebald colt.”

Mary wouldn't betray Sebastian. Sebastian trusted her.

Still he removed his hand from her door. “Thank you for your advice, old man. I find treachery remarkably easy to detect now. The Fairchilds taught me that lesson.”

Sebastian followed as Leslie limped down the hall, bruised from Lady Valéry's well-aimed kick. “What my brothers and I taught you was nothing compared to the treachery of a Fairchild woman. Why, our mother was the most heartless fiend ever born. My brothers and I suckled perfidy from her breast, and with each succeeding generation the Fairchild women built on her reputation.” He grinned evilly at Sebastian. “There's no use thinking your little Guinevere is any different. It's bred in the bone, man. Even as she betrays you in my son's bed, she's laughing at you.”

Sebastian's gut cramped. He knew what Leslie was doing. Lady Valéry had made him a laughingstock, and like a little boy, he jeered at Sebastian to make
himself feel better. But Sebastian
had
been a little boy when the Fairchilds had ruined his family.

Leslie grinned. “Left you without a word for your glib little tongue to say? Poor boy. Poor little Sebastian.”

A tableau from that time remained frozen in Sebastian's brain. His youthful bewilderment as the creditors threw his family from their home. His mother dabbing at her reddened eyes, and the hiccup of her suppressed sob. His father, standing away from them, remote as he had never been before and as he would remain until his death.

This man, this Leslie Fairchild, sitting on a finely bred horse and smirking as he witnessed their humiliation.

Now, coldly, Sebastian used the information he'd gleaned in his futile search through Leslie's bedchamber. “No one laughs at me like they laugh at an old man who dreams of inhabiting a woman's body.”

“That?” Leslie waved an airy hand back at Lady Valéry's door. “No one would believe I really wanted her.”

“I wasn't talking about your futile attempt to seduce my godmother.” Sebastian stopped and let Leslie hobble a little farther along the corridor. “I mean that you actually want to
be
a woman. The guests at your party would be quite entertained by your habit of wearing bosom extenders in the privacy of your chamber.”

Leslie staggered to a halt.

“And think how the ton would laugh if they were
informed of your cherished habit of dressing in skirts and forcing the maids to dance with you.”

“Quiet!” Leslie quivered, but he didn't turn around. “It's not true, but I suppose you will slander me unless I…pay your price.”

“I don't have a price,” Sebastian answered. “I'm too rich to have a price. And there's your predicament, Leslie.”

Not waiting to see the results of his intimidation, he walked the other direction.

“She knows about the diary,” Leslie called softly.

Sebastian's feet suddenly tangled, and he stumbled to a halt.

“She's always known where it is.”

Sebastian turned and started toward Leslie, but at the sight of his face, Leslie seemed to have discovered an elixer of youth, for he turned and fled down the corridor. Sebastian skidded to a stop and tried to calm his racing heart.

The diary. Someone had admitted to knowing about the diary. He'd begun to worry that he had made a fatal mistake, that the diary was not here. But Leslie knew about it, and Leslie claimed that Mary…

Turning once more, Sebastian walked past Mary's door without a glance. Leslie claimed that Mary knew. He said she and Ian were lovers, laughing at Sebastian as he fruitlessly searched the manor, risking life and limb, getting himself beaten by unknown assailants. And all for a diary that Mary…had stolen? That was what he'd first suspected in Scotland,
but her innocent manner and her seeming sincerity, coupled with Lady Valéry's assurances, had convinced him otherwise. Now Leslie said…But Sebastian knew better than to believe a Fairchild.

But if two Fairchilds told two tales, which Fairchild should he believe?

He scolded himself. This was stupid. Of course he trusted Mary. Nothing,
nothing
Leslie said could change that.

Sebastian found he had clenched his teeth, and made a conscious effort to relax.

He
did
trust Mary. He
would
enlist her help in opening the safe.

And God help her if she betrayed him.

“Ah, you're a beauty, too good for the likes of
this place.” Ian leaned forward earnestly and spoke with all the conviction of a lover.

The young filly to whom he spoke lowered her eyes flirtatiously.

“Let me take you away. We'll run through the moonlight together, and we'll never come back.” Lifting the bottle of brandy he held in one hand, he drank until his stomach burned. When he lowered the bottle, he found she was watching him reproachfully. “Yes, yes, I know. We would have to come back. Me, to ruin a good woman's reputation, and you”—he sneered, a truly nasty full-bodied sneer that made him feel comfortably superior—“you for your feed. You females are all alike. Only interested in what money can buy. A good saddle, a comfortable stall.” He gestured around at the Fairchilds' horse stable, then glared at the mare before him. “And a handful of
oats when you want them. That's all any of you care about.”

The mare tilted her head as if to ask what was wrong with that.

“You jade. Well, to hell with you, then.” He picked up the lantern off the post and staggered away. Then he backed up and leaned over the gate into the stall, and made his final pronouncement. “To hell with all women. They're more trouble than they're worth.”

The mare made her opinion of that clear with one moist exhalation, and he jumped backward and wiped at his face with his sleeve. Brandy sloshed onto his elegant velvet waistcoat, and he stared, dumbstruck, at the dark stain.

“Now see what you've done,” he said. “You've made me spill my gargle. But there's more.” He leaned down and searched the packed-earth floor until he saw the second, still-corked bottle sitting where he'd left it. “I suppose you're wondering how I will pick it up, with a lantern in one hand and a bottle in the other. But you see, that is the marvel of having fingers.” Carefully he retrieved the bottle by its neck, then showed the disinterested horse. “Don't you wish you had some?”

She didn't reply, and he nodded triumphantly. “Ha! Got you there.”

The two bottles clinked together as he continued down the aisle between the stalls, and the lantern cast flecks of light around the stable. He passed through
the entrance into the area where the stallions were kept, and the great, muscled creatures whispered to him as he walked, acknowledging his superiority in the quiet way of well-trained animals. The lead stallion, the one who had established domination over all the other males, dipped his head, and Ian returned the salute. “It's a full moon tonight,” he said to Quick. “Don't you feel the pull? Don't you want to run and run until you find the end of the earth?”

Quick nodded in full, graceful motions.

“Me, too.” Ian lifted one bottle. “But I drink instead. There's no such comfort as that for you.”

“And best not be, either,” a crisp voice said from inside the stall.

Ian stared hard at the stallion, then relaxed when a blond head slowly rose from the dimness. “I thought it was Quick speaking,” he confessed with a laugh. Then laughter died as he lifted the lantern and the blond man stepped into the light. “B'God, it's another Fairchild bastard!”

The young man took a hasty step forward and made to grab Ian's coat, but Quick moved smoothly and knocked him into the wall. Not meanly, so Ian knew the young man was favored among the animals, but inexorably, so that Ian would not be hurt.

“I meant no harm,” Ian protested while the young man shoved at the horse. “I'm one of the Fairchild bastards, too. I just thought we knew of them all.”

“Come on, old man, let me by. I'll not beat him.” The young man spoke to the stallion as an equal, and
Quick stepped away. Moving toward the front of the stall, he leaned his arms over the door and asked, “What makes you think I'm a Fairchild?”

Ian laughed again. “Your face. Your hair. Your size, your charm…At least, I assume you have charm. I've never met a Fairchild who doesn't.”

The young man stared solemnly, then a slow grin transformed his dour countenance. “Aye, I'm at least as charming as you.”

A touch of Scottish, Ian thought. But well spoken and obviously educated. Interesting. Where had dear Leslie been wandering now? Or was it Burgess? Or…“Do you know who your father is?”

The young man looked surprised. “Of course.”

“So do I.” Ian lifted the bottles. “Let's have another drink.”

The young man opened the gate, then latched it behind him. “I haven't had one yet.”

Ian handed him the untouched bottle and waited while the young man uncorked it and took a long pull. He didn't cough, but his eyes watered a bit, and he said, “Fine stuff.”

“The best. Fairchilds only drink the best.”

“Why don't you give me that?” The young man took the lantern from Ian's unresisting hand. “A fire in the stable is an ugly thing.”

“And where should we drink our fine gargle?” Ian asked.

The young man considered Ian carefully. He seemed unsure of how to respond to his new relative,
but finally he said, “I have a place that's private where we can…talk.”

Ian followed him toward the back of the stable. “I'm Ian. And you are…?”

“Had…Haley.”

“Good to meet you…Hadd Haley.” Ian grinned at him, and Hadd stared stoically back. “Keeping yourself a secret, are you? That's all very well, but your face'll betray you soon enough. Looks like it must have betrayed you to the stable hands.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You've got bruises.” Ian pointed at the black eyes Hadd sported. “Been fighting to quiet the whispering, have you? It'll never work.” He touched his chest with his thumb. “
I
know.”

“I'll remember,” Hadd said.

“So I have a new brother. Or is it cousin?”

“Cousin, I would think. We could go up to the loft, but I don't know if you could negotiate the stairs.”

Ian shook his head in rueful acknowledgement of his own incapacity.

“So we'll stay here.” Hadd gestured to the bay where clean straw was stacked and waiting to be distributed after the stalls were mucked out in the morning.

“Very good.” Ian flung himself onto a particularly thick layer, then writhed as the straw stuck him through his trousers. “How do the horses sleep on this stuff?”

“They don't lie down, usually.” Hadd hung the
lantern on a hook and settled more sedately. He studied Ian with his blue Fairchild eyes until Ian wanted to squirm.

Instead, he said, “Drink. It'll ease my shock at finding a cousin working in the stable.”

“Ease your shock, will it?” Hadd's solemn face crinkled in a little smile, and he tilted the bottle as instructed.

“I take it you haven't gone up to the manor and announced yourself?”

“No, and I'll thank you not to, either.”

Hadd took the situation too seriously, much more seriously than any of the uncles would. But he would find that out on his own soon enough, so Ian lifted his hand, palm out. “I have enough problems with the cousins already living in the manor. I'll leave you to find your own way.”

Hadd watched Ian steadily. “What are you doing in the stable?”

“It's a fine place to get bosky.” Ian felt the need to clarify. “More bosky. Really, really, stinking bosky. The company is good.” Ian waved toward the line of stalls, then dipped his bottle toward Hadd. “I've got relatives here. And I don't have to see my lovely object of desire. I don't have to hear her chirpy little voice whispering how much she admires me, and I sure as hell don't have to pretend I have only her best interests at heart.”

“Don't you?”

Ian laughed a little too long. “Don't be stupid. Not
her
best interests. I don't love her. Not
love.
” He gave the word its most lascivious intonation. “I just want her money.” He glared at Hadd as if the young man had chided him. “And what's wrong with that?”

“Nothing, I suppose.” Hadd sounded mild. “I understand that's the way society chooses their mates.”

“That's right. I am just as evil as the rest of the Fairchilds, damn it!” Ian tried to maintain his belligerence, but it slipped when he mumbled, “I just don't revel in it like the others do.”

“I suppose that makes you admirable.”

“Oh,
please.
As if suffering agonies at the thought of seducing a woman makes me better than the rest of that leprous family.” Too late, Ian noted the dry note Hadd had injected into his voice. “You're laughing at me.”

“Perhaps.” Hadd stretched out his long legs and crossed them at the ankles.

“You haven't lived with them like I have. Lucky, lucky…” Ian forgot his train of thought as he noticed the bits of hay that clung to his waistcoat, particularly in one oval spot. He brushed at it and realized it was wet, and wondered who had drenched him. Unbuttoning his waistcoat, he lifted the wet place away from his chest. “What was I saying?”

“That you're courting a young lady for her money.”

The situation with Mary came rushing back so swiftly, Ian wondered how he could have ever forgotten.
“Every time she smiles at me, every time she dances with me, every time she laughs with me, I almost confess and beg forgiveness.”

Hadd took another drink. “You could.”

“Don't be ridiculous. I can't turn back now! This was all my idea. The first time anyone in the family admired me.”
Where had that thought come from?
“But if I don't follow through, I'll be ostracized. Not that I care what Fairchilds think—with their brains, I'm not even sure you could call it thinking—but I've been with them too long. They've corrupted me.” They had. It had taken years for him to seek inside himself and find the depths of immorality the other Fairchilds sported so easily, but he understood the appeal of such wickedness now. “One gentlewoman who believes me good isn't enough to change me back.”

“If courting this one bothers you so much, couldn't you find another heiress?” Hadd asked curiously.

“There weren't but four heiresses invited to the house party,” Ian informed him. “And the others have been kept well away from me—Fairchild reputation, y'know, coupled with that pesky illegitimacy. No, there's only the one heiress for me.”

“Too bad.” Hadd seemed amused rather than perturbed.

Ian steadied his shaking hand and tilted the bottle, grimacing as the glass clinked against his teeth. Lowering it, he wiped the edges of his mouth with his ruffled cuff, and said, “I know now to take what I
want when I want it, or suffer the consequences. Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like you know something I don't. I assure you, I'll go through with this.” As he contemplated his situation at Fairchild Manor, his resolve strengthened. “I want no more deprivation. I'm tired of the humiliation. And I am never, never going to depend on Fairchilds again.”

“This young lady you're courting.” Hadd ran his finger around the rim of the bottle he held. “Are you going to neglect her?”

“No.”

“Beat her?”

“No!”

“Move your mistress in the house with her?”

“Certainly not.”

“Very well, what's the problem? These society girls, as I understand it, are raised to be bred for their fortune. You say you're just as corrupt as the rest of the Fairchilds, and I'm not a man who views other men with a feminine eye, but I suspect you could make this woman happy with very little effort.”

“Of course. I'm a hell of a lover. She should adore me.”

“Then what is the problem?”

Ian knew all the circumstances, and he was too drunk not to confess them. “She's in love with another man.”

Hadd smiled at the disclosure that so pained Ian. “How do you know that?”

Ian stared. Hadd didn't think her love important. Or else he didn't believe Ian knew what he was talking about. So Ian told the truth. “Didn't you know? I'm the son of a Selkie.”

“A Selkie.” Hadd sat forward. “Your mother is a seal-lady?”

Surprised, Ian looked at this newest Fairchild. He was younger, cleaner, more honorable than Ian, better in every way, and now…more knowledgeable? “How did you know that?” Ian asked.

“I've studied the old legends in Scotland.” Hadd's burr strengthened. “But I've never met anyone who claimed to be the descendent of a Selkie.”

“I don't claim anything,” Ian said flatly. “I am.”

Hadd took a long pull from the bottle, acting for the first time like he needed the drink. Pulling a leather bag from his vest pocket, he tossed it to Ian.

Ian caught it, held it, looked inside it. “Rocks?”

“Throw it back.” Hadd caught Ian's wild toss. “Where's your mother now?”

“She went back to the sea.” And abandoned her son with his father. “They always go back to the sea.”

“Transformed into a seal.” Hadd scraped a spot on the floor clean, then poured the rocks out. He stared at them, then stared at Ian, then stared at the stones again. “Fascinating. And what effect has that had on you?”

“I miss her.” Ian spoke faintly, for the pain had subsided through the years and he barely noticed it anymore.

Hadd didn't notice it at all. Gathering up his rocks, he put them in the bag and slid them back into his vest. “I mean, why has being the son of a Selkie made you know that this girl loves someone else?”

“Oh, that.” Ian shrugged with an elaborate lack of concern. “I can see…feelings.”

“Feelings? Like what?”

The young man gave every evidence of excitement and none of disbelief, so Ian told him. “I see auras. Colors and light around people.” He rubbed a hand over his suddenly weary face. “I'm a difficult man to lie to.”

“And this young lady—what kind of light do you see around her?”